The figure of the ascetic in "The World as Will and Representation"

The present text assumes the scope of the Schopenhauer’s reflection on asceticism, in order to point out the place given to the figure of the ascetic in the process of denial of the will, based on the work The world as will and as representation (1818). In order to do so, at first, we try to present the tragic vision of the existent according to Schopenhauer, since the realization of an ascetic existence depends on the intuitive knowledge of the essence of representation. In a second point, we turn to the thematization of asceticism as another margin that presents itself to life as an illness – that is, one that blindly or even consciously claims to want to live and, therefore, slides, irreducibly, into suffering. Finally, it is pointed out the difficulty inherent to the reflection on asceticism as the summit of the ethical life as a process of denial of the will