"Although the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer spent most of his life in relative obscurity, by his final decade he was counted among the most famous philosophers in all of Europe. A singular and remarkably influential thinker, Schopenhauer is usually described as an extreme pessimist. He saw existence as fundamentally without purpose in a world in which human desires can only be satisfied in a fleeting sense. This book reevaluates Schopenhauer's pessimism in the context of his life experiences, revealing the philosopher's relentless fascination with the world and making a case for his contemporary relevance. Despite his pessimistic outlook on human existence, Schopenhauer didn't give up after concluding that we live in a world full of endless suffering. Rather, he recognized that the question of how to live becomes even more pressing, and he worked to provide an answer. In this book, David Bather Woods shows how Schopenhauer used his unique intellectual freedom to take on a wide range of worldly issues that continue to matter to us today, including mental health, education, sex, gender, punishment, loneliness, race, fame, and death. This book tells the story of how the events of Schopenhauer's life informed his original stances on these issues, and how his answers to many of life's most pressing questions still resonate today"--