German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer is born in Danzig, Germany (now in Poland). Arthur Schopenhauer will become best known for his pessimistic philosophy that human beings are simply manifestations of their own egotistical wills, rarely thinking much about the concerns or needs of others and only seeking to survive.
One of the consequences of Schopenhauer's idea that will is the ultimate reality of the world is that a person's individual will cannot come under the direct control of reason. Instead, reason must serve as an expression of will. People's motivations are located primarily in the unconscious rather than in the conscious mind; human action is therefore a product of blind urges which the conscious mind only later seeks to explain and justify.
Arthur Shopenhauer's writings will be very influential on intellectuals and scholars like Friedrich Nietzsche, Richard Wagner, Jacob Burckhardt, Gerhart Hauptmann, and Thomas Mann.
