Pensées et fragments

Schopenhauer abandoned the merchant enterprise after the death of his father who wanted him to continue in the business and sought his passion in medicine. After a year, however, he replaced the study of medicine with the pursuit of philosophy, under the conversion-like awareness that "life is a problem" and ought to be reflected upon. With little appreciation for systematic philosophers like Hegel, Fichte, and Schelling, he purposively lectured during the same hour as Hegel at the University of Berlin in hopes of detracting students away from the "charlatan" (as he called him), apparently with not much success. Giving up on teaching all together, Schopenhauer moved to Frankfurt, where he wrote in "silent indignation" On the Will in Nature in 1836 and eight years later published for a second time The World as Will and Idea in 1844.