Dale Jacquette charts the development of Schopenhauer's ideas from the time of his early dissertation on "The Fourfold
Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason" through the two editions of his magnum opus "The World as Will and
Representation" to his later collections of philosophical aphorisms and competition essays. Jacquette explores the
central topics in Schopenhauer's philosophy including his metaphysics of the world as representation and Will, his so called pessimistic philosophical appraisal of the human condition, his examination of the concept of death, his dualistic analysis of free will, and his simplified non-Kantian theory of morality.