In a universe driven by blind, insatiable will, where every conscious being is condemned to oscillate between suffering and boredom, Schopenhauer identified one experience available to ordinary people that offers genuine, if temporary, liberation: aesthetic contemplation. When you stand before a great painting and the world falls away, when a piece of music moves through you and for a few moments you forget who you are, what you want, and what you fear, when a novel absorbs you so completely that hours pass without awareness of time, something extraordinary is happening. The will, that relentless engine of desire and dissatisfaction...