Arthur Schopenhauer was born in 1788 in the city of Danzig (Gdańsk) as the son of Heinrich Floris Schopenhauer and Johanna Schopenhauer,[1] both descendants of wealthy German Patrician families.In 1793,when the Kingdom of Prussia acquired the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth city of Danzig,Schopenhauer's family moved to Hamburg,another Hanse city.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 as a youthSchopenhauer became a student at the University of Göttingen in 1809.There he studied metaphysics and psychology under Gottlob Ernst Schulze,the author of Aenesidemus,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.
In 1814,Schopenhauer began his seminal work The World as Will and Representation (Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung).He would finish it in 1818 and publish it the following year.In Dresden in 1819,Schopenhauer fathered an illegitimate child which was born and died the same year.[3][4] In 1820,Schopenhauer became a lecturer at the University of Berlin.He scheduled his lectures to coincide with those of the famous philosopher G.W.F.Hegel,whom Schopenhauer described as a "clumsy charlatan".[5] However,only five students turned up to Schopenhauer's lectures,and he dropped out of academia.A late essay,"On University Philosophy",expressed his resentment towards university philosophy.
In 1831,a cholera epidemic broke out in Berlin and Schopenhauer left the city.Schopenhauer settled permanently in Frankfurt in 1833,where he remained for the next twenty-seven years,living alone except for a succession of pet poodles named Atma and Butz.Schopenhauer had a robust constitution,but in 1860 his health began to deteriorate.He died of heart failure on September 21,1860,while sitting in his armchair at home.He was 72.
