Schopenhauer's concept of representation can be summarized in four points:

• Representation is the entire world as it appears to consciousness.
• Every representation exists only in the relation between subject and object.
• Representation is ordered by the forms of space, time, causality, and logic.
• Representation is only one side of reality; beneath it lies Will, the blind striving force that Schopenhauer identifies as the world's inner essence.

In this way, Schopenhauer presents a dual-aspect metaphysics: the same reality is encountered externally as representation and internally as Will. Representation is not illusion in the sense of being false; rather, it is the only way finite knowers experience the world, while Will is what that world is, in his view, at its deepest level.