This work is a collection of essays on various topics: love, women, death, the sorrows of the world, art, morality, selfishness, compassion, etc., including some considerations on his own philosophy. The work was not conceived as such by the author himself, but is the product of his reflections on these topics separately.

Here, Schopenhauer, famous for his doctrine of pessimism and will, proposes the dominant ethical and metaphysical elements of his atheistic and pessimistic philosophy, also revealing his misogyny. He brings together a wide variety of phrases, reflections, and almost epigrammatic thoughts on fundamental themes concerning humanity. The German philosopher's fine and sharp intelligence proposes diverse angles and perspectives so that the reader can reject, affirm, or reconsider his instilled ideas or those attained through personal experience regarding these universal themes.

The German philosopher's keen, yet bitter, intelligence shows us different angles of ideas we may have already considered—heartbreak, abandonment, loss of loved ones, being snatched away by the inexorable death, etc.—and which we haven't fully understood, causing us terrible unease. Despite having appeared in the 19th century, both the work and the thought of this great philosopher remain relevant today, where confusion and despair reign amid the terrible nakedness before us.