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Arthur Schopenhauer (February 22, 1788 – September 21, 1860) was a German philosopher known for his atheistic pessimism and philosophical clarity. At age 25, he published his doctoral dissertation, On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason, which examined the fundamental question of whether reason alone can unlock answers about the world. Schopenhauer's most influential work, The World as Will and Representation, emphasized the role of man's basic motivation, which Schopenhauer called "will". Schopenhauer's analysis of "will" led him to the conclusion that emotional, physical, and sexual desires can never be fulfilled. Consequently, Schopenhauer favored a lifestyle of negating human desires, similar to the teachings of Buddhism. Schopenhauer's metaphysical analysis of "will", his views on human motivation and desire, and his aphoristic writing style influenced many well-known philosophers, including Friedrich Nietzsche, Richard Wagner, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Sigmund Freud. Arthur Schopenhauer was born in 1788 in the city of Danzig (Gdansk) as the son of Heinrich Floris Schopenhauer and Johanna Schopenhauer,[1] both descendants of wealthy German families. In 1793, when Prussia acquired Danzig, Schopenhauer's family moved to Hamburg. In 1805, Schopenhauer's father died, possibly by committing suicide.[2] Schopenhauer's mother Joanna moved to Weimar, then the centre of German literature, to pursue her writing career. After one year, Schopenhauer left the family business in Hamburg to join her. Schopenhauer became a student at the University of Göttingen in 1809. There he studied metaphysics and psychology under Gottlob Ernst Schulze, who advised him to concentrate on Plato and Kant. In Berlin, from 1811 to 1812, he had attended lectures by the prominent post-Kantian philosopher J. G. Fichte and the theologian Schleiermacher.
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