Born in Danzig, then part of Poland. His chief work The World as Will and Idea (1818) expounded an atheistic, pessimistic theory akin to Buddhism. The driving force of irrational will in human beings results in an ever-frustrated cycle of desire, from which the only escape is a contemplative existence inspired by the arts, and eventual absorption into nothingness.

He claims that homosexuality is natural and the nature is amoral, and this opinion was a fundamental challenge to the 19th century homophobia. No doubt it would be idle to speculate about his personal motivations. Notorious for his misogynist views, Schopenhauer never married; declaring that young men "really offer the eight of human beauty", he mantained a long-term friendship with a younger man, Julius Frauenstädt. At his death a number of his papers on sexual love were suppressed by his executors.