system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Is it necessary to read Kant before reading Schopenhauer?

I've recently started reading World as Will and Representation. The foreword from the author explicitly gives you a "manual" on how to read this book. Apart from instructing the reader to read some of Schopenhauer's earlier essays (e. g. On the Fourfold Root of Principle of Sufficient Reason) Schopenhauer also stressed the fact that the reader should be familiar with Kant's principal works.

Is it really necessary to thoroughly read Kant before diving into Schopenhauer or will just general knowledge of Kant's  thought suffice and allow me to understand Schopenhauer's works?
gpt
A general knowledge of Kant suffices because Schopenhauer explains Kant pretty well through paraphrase. However, his philosophy does explicitly build upon Kantian foundations, and contemporary readers of Schopenhauer would have been familiar with Kant by default.

You will very quickly be able to tell for yourself, as you go through the first book, whether or not you need to read some (more) Kant before going further.