Educated in Germany, Schopenhauer traveled throughout his childhood to France, Holland, Switzerland, Austria, and England. After his father’s death, which biographers attribute to suicide, his mother, Johanna Troisner, moved to Weimar and became a celebrated novelist. She introduced Arthur to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, August Wilhelm Schlegel, and the Brothers Grimm.

Schopenhauer studied medicine at the University of Götttingen and philosophy at Berlin, getting his doctorate at the University of Jena. After that, he lived in Frankfurt. His doctoral dissertation, On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason (1813), formed the basis of his philosophy, which appeared systematically in his most important work, The World as Will and Representation (1818).