When a mosquito settles on your hand, it is driven by the will to feast on your blood. Your body, driven by instinctive self-preservation, reacts by moving your hand away. The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer in The World as Will and Representation (1818) proposed a theory that unifies all the actors in this little play: the mosquito, your body, and both your instincts.Schopenhauer observed that of all the objects in the world your own body is peculiar, because not only do you perceive it in time and space, but also inhabit it through your consciousness. He then reasoned that if you possess this dual aspect then so must all things, both living and inanimate, trees, stones, and mosquitoes.Schopenhauer calls this inner aspect the Will to Live, a blind, restlessly striving impulse evident in the most basic of instincts: survival and reproduction.To Schopenhauer, the Will is a single universal entity; your own will and the will of the mosquito are one and the same. It is the viewer seeking rationality who conjures up the world of representation, in which the Will explodes into a myriad of individuality — the world is merely ‘a theatrical production within the stage of our minds’1.The result is a frightening world of pain and suffering, as fragmented individuals possessed by the blind Will compete for survival — the mosquito versus you.For Schopenhauer, relief from this relentless state can be achieved by reversing the explosion of individuality to reach a universal state of consciousness. This state is fleetingly experienced through the arts, as the subject ‘loses himself’2 in its appreciation, or through heightened morality, by seeing the universal Will in all of humanity.However, Schopenhauer believes these forms of transcending individuality are only temporary. To truly achieve lasting peace one must adopt an ascetic life — in essence, by renouncing the Will altogether.