In his award-winning essay On the Freedom of the Will, Schopenhauer presents this central and ever-relevant philosophical problem in a thorough, original, comprehensive, and simultaneously accessible analysis.

He demonstrates that human actions are determined by the influence of motives on the immutable human character with a necessity as compelling as that which governs other phenomena in the world.

Furthermore, he reveals the sources of the delusion that human will is free. However, this does not abolish human freedom; rather, it shifts it to the transcendental realm of the intelligible character.

This essay at hand is one of the shorter writings that frames Schopenhauer's main work and explores a central philosophical issue more in-depth than that work does. The thorough analysis to which the question of freedom is subjected here continues to hold immense interest today.