6. Arthur Schopenhauer

This characterizes the circumstances that Arthur Schopenhauer found himself in when, after an eventful youth, he began his philosophical apprenticeship in 1810. He heard echoes of Fichte's, Schelling's and above all Kant's views from the pulpits and from the works of contemporary philosophers. The way in which Schopenhauer turned the views of his great predecessors, especially Kant and Fichte, into elements of his own system of ideas can be understood by examining the period of his life that preceded his preoccupation with philosophy.