Arthur Schopenhauer — "A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants."
A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants.
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More from Arthur Schopenhauer
"Human life is a business that does not pay its expenses."
"Man is the only animal that causes pain to others for the mere pleasure of doing it."
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."
"The world is my representation."
"Reading is merely a substitute for thought."
About Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)
German philosopher of pessimism whose The World as Will and Representation (1819) defined the suffering-and-renunciation tradition. Closely associated with Immanuel Kant (the system Schopenhauer built on and revised). For an intellectual contrast, see G.W.F. Hegel, German Idealist of the rational unfolding of Spirit — Schopenhauer scheduled his Berlin lectures opposite Hegel's and spent decades attacking Hegel's optimistic system as deliberately mystifying nonsense — the foundational rivalry of 19th-century German philosophy.
The standard scholarly entry points to Arthur Schopenhauer's work: Bryan Magee (Oxford, populariser-philosopher) — The Philosophy of Schopenhauer (1983); Christopher Janaway (Southampton, Schopenhauer specialist) — Self and World in Schopenhauer's Philosophy (1989); David E. Cartwright (Wisconsin–Whitewater) — Schopenhauer: A Biography (2010). These are the works graduate seminars cite when teaching Arthur Schopenhauer.