Robert Wicks is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. His publications, which include ten books and many articles, range over 19th century European philosophy, Kant, existentialism, aesthetics, and Asian philosophy.

Introduction - Robert Wicks
PART I Biographical Context and Philosophical Influences
1. Schopenhauer's Intellectual Relationship with Goethe: An Ambivalent Affinity
Adrian Del Caro
2. Karl Christian Friedrich Krause's Influence on Schopenhauer's Philosophy
Benedikt Paul Göcke
3. Schopenhauer's Understanding of Schelling
Judith Norman and Alistair Welchman
4. Fichte and Schopenhauer on Knowledge, Ethics, Right, and Religion
Yolanda Estes
5. Schopenhauer and the Orient
Urs App

PART II Metaphysics of Will and Empirical Knowledge
6. The Enduring Kantian Presence in Schopenhauer's Philosophy
Sandra Shapshay
7. Schopenhauer on the Will as the Window to the World
Ivan Soll
8. Force in Nature - Schopenhauer's Scientific Beginning
D. G. Carus
9. Schopenhauer and Hume on Will and Causation
Severin Schroeder
10. Schopenhauer's Haunted World: The Use of Weird and Paranormal Phenomena to Corroborate His Metaphysics
David Cartwright
11. The Mystery of Freedom
Pilar López de Santa María

PART III Aesthetic Experience, Music, and the Sublime
12. Classical Beauty and the Expression of Personal Character in Schopenhauer's Aesthetics
Robert Wicks
13. The Genius and the Metaphysics of the Beautiful
Maria Lucia Mello Oliveira Cacciola
14. Schopenhauer and the Paradox of the Sublime
Bart Vandenabeele
15. Schopenhauer and the Metaphysics of Music
Paul Gordon
PART IV HUMAN MEANING, POLITICS, AND MORALITY
16. The Moral Meaning of the World
Christopher Janaway
17. Schopenhauer's Pessimism in Context
Mark Migotti
18. Schopenhauer's Moral Philosophy: Responding to Senselessness
Robert Guay
19. Schopenhauer on Law and Justice
Raymond B. Marcin
20. Schopenhauer, Buddhism, and Compassion
Richard Reilly
21. Schopenhauer and Confucian Thinkers on Compassion
Douglas Berger
PART V RELIGION AND SCHOPENHAUER'S PHILOSOPHY
22. Schopenhauer and the Diamond-Sutra
Christopher Ryan
23. Schopenhauer and Hindu Thought
R. Raj Singh
24. Schopenhauer and Christianity
Gerard Mannion
25. The Inscrutable Riddle of Schopenhauer Relations to Jews and to Judaism
Jacob Golomb
PART VI Schopenhauer's Influence
26. Post-Schopenhauerian Metaphysics: Hartmann, Mainländer, Bahnsen, and Nietzsche
Sebastian Gardner
27. Nietzsche's Schopenhauer
Tom Stern
28. Schopenhauer and the Unconscious
Stephan Atzert
29. Schopenhauer's Influence on Wagner
Kevin C. Karnes and Andrew J. Mitchell
30. Schopenhauer's Fin de Siècle Reception in Austria
Paul Bishop
31. The Next Metaphysical Mutation: Schopenhauer as Michel Houellebecq's Educator
Christopher A. Howard

More than two hundred years after the publication of his seminal The World as Will and Representation, Arthur Schopenhauer's influence is still felt in philosophy and beyond. As one of the most readable and central philosophers of the 19th century, his work inspired the most influential thinkers and artists of his time, including Nietzsche, Freud, and Wagner. Though known primarily as a herald of philosophical pessimism, the full range of his contributions is displayed here in a collection of thirty-one essays on the forefront of Schopenhauer scholarship.
Essays written by contemporary Schopenhauer scholars explore his central notions, including the will, empirical knowledge, and the sublime, and widens to the interplay of ethics and religion with Schopenhauer's philosophy. Authors confront difficult aspects of Schopenhauer's work and legacy--for example, the extent to which Schopenhauer adopted ideas from his predecessors compared to how much was original and visionary in his central claim that reality is a blind, senseless "will," the effectiveness of his philosophy in the field of scientific explanation and extrasensory phenomena, and the role of beauty and sublimity in his outlook. Essays also challenge prevailing assumptions about Schopenhauer by exploring the fundamental role of compassion in his moral theory, the Hindu, Christian, and Buddhist aspects of his philosophy, and the importance of asceticism in his views on the meaning of life.
The collection is an internationally constituted work that reflects upon Schopenhauer's philosophy with authors presently working across the globe. It demonstrates fully the richness of Schopenhauer's work and his lasting impact on philosophy and psychoanalysis, as well as upon music, the visual arts, and literature.