Dude

Philosophy of the "Will"
Schopenhauer in 1815, second of the critical five years of the initial composition of Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung.

A key focus of Schopenhauer was his investigation of individual motivation. Before Schopenhauer, Hegel had popularized the concept of Zeitgeist, the idea that society consisted of a collective consciousness which moved in a distinct direction, dictating the actions of its members. Schopenhauer, a reader of both Kant and Hegel, criticized their logical optimism and the belief that individual morality could be determined by society and reason. Schopenhauer believed that humans were motivated by only their own basic desires, or Wille zum Leben ("Will to Live"), which directed all of mankind.[29]

For Schopenhauer, human desire was futile, illogical, directionless, and, by extension, so was all human action in the world. He wrote "Man can indeed do what he wants, but he cannot will what he wants". In this sense, he adhered to the Fichtean principle of idealism: “the world is for a subject”. This idealism so presented, immediately commits it to an ethical attitude, unlike the purely epistemological concerns of Descartes and Berkeley. To Schopenhauer, the Will is a malignant,[30] metaphysical existence which controls not only the actions of individual, intelligent agents, but ultimately all observable phenomena; an evil to be terminated via mankind's duties: asceticism and chastity.[30] He is credited with one of the most famous opening lines of philosophy: “The world is my representation”. Will, for Schopenhauer, is what Kant called the "thing-in-itself."[31] Nietzsche was greatly influenced by this idea of Will, while developing it in a different direction.
Art and aesthetics
Main article: Arthur Schopenhauer's aesthetics

For Schopenhauer, human desiring, "willing," and craving cause suffering or pain. A temporary way to escape this pain is through aesthetic contemplation (a method comparable to Zapffe's