An idea · Nineteenth Century · first attested 1818
The Will to Live
Beneath the world of appearance, a blind, purposeless striving.
Schopenhauer's name for the thing-in-itself. The Will is not deliberate, not rational, not personal — it is an undirected hunger that you feel as your own desire and that, beneath every phenomenon, is the inner reality of the universe. It is what makes the world go round and what makes living things suffer.