Abstract

Outlines the ways in which Schopenhauer alleges that value is to be attained by an escape from or denial of the will that is our essence. Schopenhauer's pessimism involves a negative assessment of the life of insatiable striving and egoism to which the will condemns the individual. Aesthetic experience provides an escape into a will‐less state of consciousness. Ethics is founded on the recognition that individuation is basically illusory and egoism an erroneous impulse to action. Finally, Schopenhauer speaks of a mystical vision in which one does not distinguish oneself as an individual from the whole, a state in which one reaches denial of the will.