Welcome to Aeon’s archive week. Every so often we like to give the spotlight to a selection of past, outstanding Aeon Essays. This time, we’re celebrating Essays that have led to successful books. Below you'll find a link to these Essays, as well as an exclusive quote from the author.

From this Essay, David Bather Woods’s book Arthur Schopenhauer: The Life and Thought of Philosophy’s Greatest Pessimist is forthcoming this year.

‘After years of reading and writing about Schopenhauer, he still surprises me. Despite his reputation for gloominess, he often makes me laugh with his bleak pronouncements, bizarre stories and barbed insults. Despite his reputation for misanthropy, his philosophy of compassion reveals the profound depths of the human heart. In this essay, I wanted to give Aeon readers the same sense of surprise by discovering that Schopenhauer can teach us a lot about what happiness is and – crucially – what it isn’t. Since writing these pieces for Aeon and Psyche, I’ve tried to uncover yet more unexpected sides to Schopenhauer in my forthcoming philosophical biography. By telling the story of Schopenhauer’s own life, it explores his ideas about a range of human experiences, including love, sex, fame, loneliness, madness and death.’

– David Bather Woods