Desire and dissatisfaction › The Core Thesis in Plain Language
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Schopenhauer's central claim can be stated without jargon: reality at bottom is a single, blind, ceaseless striving, which he calls the Will, and everything we experience is that striving made visible to a perceiving mind. Because striving is by nature insatiable, existence carries a structural burden of suffering that no amount of achievement can remove. Happiness is not a positive state but the temporary relief of a want. His account develops aesthetic contemplation, compassion, and, at its most radical, the denial of the will-to-live as different ways in which ordinary self-interested willing can lose its hold.
Not "willpower" in the everyday sense, and not a conscious faculty of choice. Schopenhauer's Will is the metaphysical essence of reality: the inner nature he attributes to phenomena ranging from gravity and plant growth to human desire. It has no final aim that would bring all striving to completion. It is not a hidden physical force causing appearances from behind them. Individual human "wills" are, on his account, manifestations of this one underlying drive appearing under the conditions of time and space.
The account separates a particular aim from striving as such. On Schopenhauer's interpretation, understanding why someone pursues one object would still leave the underlying activity of wanting to explain. Reaching the object can settle that aim while leaving striving ready to take another form.
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