Weltgeist Deep within an essay On the Art of Thinking for Oneself, Schopenhauer has four novels to recommend his readers. Of course, they are each in a different language… He also gives us objective, measurable standards to judge the artistic merit of a novel. Schopenhauer looks at how much a novel deals with the inner life — the more it deals with the inner life of the protagonist, the more artistic a novel becomes because it’s the inner world that excites our interest – not the outer world of representation. Schopenhauer’s recommended reading list: 1) Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne (https://amzn.to/3toq2zW) 2) Julie, ou la Nouvelle Héloïse by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (https://amzn.to/36EeKxK) 3) Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (https://amzn.to/3pPkGvw) 4) Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes (https://amzn.to/3aBNKQO)