Arthur Schopenhauer (Danzig, February 22, 1788 – Frankfurt, September 21, 1860) was a 19th-century German philosopher. He is best known for his work "The World as Will and Representation" (1818), in which he characterizes the phenomenal world as the product of a blind, insatiable, and malevolent metaphysical will. He wrote other acclaimed works such as "The Sorrows of the World" and "Aphorisms for the Wisdom of Life," among others. Building upon Immanuel Kant's transcendental idealism, Schopenhauer developed an atheistic and ethical metaphysical system that has been described as an exemplary manifestation of philosophical pessimism.