Schopenhauer on Art as Escape from the Will

Arthur Schopenhauer presented his mature aesthetic theory in Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung (The World as Will and Representation), first published in 1818 (dated 1819) and substantially expanded in a second edition of 1844 that added a full second volume of supplementary chapters. Schopenhauer's metaphysics, developed from a distinctive and idiosyncratic synthesis of Kant's distinction between phenomena and things-in-themselves with elements drawn from his reading of Hindu Upanishadic and Buddhist thought (Schopenhauer owned and heavily annotated Anquetil-Duperil's Latin translation of the Upanishads, the Oupnek'hat, published 1801–1802), holds that the inner reality underlying the entire world of representation (Vorstellung, the phenomenal world as we perceive it, structured by space, time, and causality) is a single, blind, striving cosmic force he calls Will (Wille) — an aimless, insatiable striving without ultimate purpose or resting point, manifesting at every level of nature from gravity and magnetism up through plant growth, animal instinct, and, at its most intense and self-conscious, human desire.