Free Ebook: Schopenhauer - The World As Will And Idea (Kindle, Epub, HTML)

“The world is my idea:”—this is a truth which holds good for everything that lives and knows, though man alone can bring it into reflective and abstract consciousness. If he really does this, he has attained to philosophical wisdom. It then becomes clear and certain to him that what he knows is not a sun and an earth, but only an eye that sees a sun, a hand that feels an earth; that the world which surrounds him is there only as idea, i.e., only in relation to something else, the consciousness, which is himself." The World As Will And Idea

For all of those people that received an e-reader for Christmas:

It is certain that one does not need to understand Schopenhauer's thought to enjoy Wagner but I think it would be true to say that understanding Schopenhauer will certainly aid ones understanding of Wagner.

This is the still readable first english translation of of The World As Will And Idea from Haldane and J. Kemp, consisting of volume one (books 1 - 4) perhaps the most read of Schopenhauer's work - although personally. I think his Essays and Aphorisms may provide a better overview  to his thought.

Hosted at Project Gutenberg and long, long in the public domain.

To download simply click the format of your choice. There is also an audio introduction to Schopenhauer here if you missed it previously.

HTML	1.6 MB
EPUB (with images)	801 kB
EPUB (no images)	466 kB
Kindle (with images)	1.6 MB
Kindle (no images)	1.1 MB