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Peter Wessel Zapffe Quotes

Peter Wessel Zapffe was a Norwegian metaphysician, author, lawyer and mountaineer. He is often noted for his philosophically pessimistic and fatalistic view of human existence—his system of philosophy in line with the work of the earlier philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, by whom he was inspired—as well as his firm advocacy of antinatalism. His thoughts regarding the error of human life are presented in the essay The Last Messiah . This essay is a shorter version of his best-known work, the philosophical treatise On the Tragic . Wikipedia  

✵ 18. December 1899 – 12. October 1990
Peter Wessel Zapffe photo

Works

The Last Messiah
Peter Wessel Zapffe
The Last Messiah
Peter Wessel Zapffe
Peter Wessel Zapffe: 15 quotes29 likes

Famous Peter Wessel Zapffe Quotes

“In accordance with my conception of life, I have chosen not to bring children into the world. A coin is examined, and only after careful deliberation, given to a beggar, whereas a child is flung out into the cosmic brutality without hesitation.”

Peter Wessel Zapffe

Source: The Last Messiah (1933), To Be a Human Being https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4m6vvaY-Wo&t=1110s (1989–90)

“When a human being takes his life in depression, this is a natural death of spiritual causes. The modern barbarity of 'saving' the suicidal is based on a hair-raising misapprehension of the nature of existence.”

Peter Wessel Zapffe

The Last Messiah [Den sidste Messias] (1933)

“To bear children into this world is like carrying wood into a burning house.”

Peter Wessel Zapffe

As quoted in Reflekser i trylleglass: stemmer fra vårt århundre [Magical Reflections : Voices of Our Century] (1998) edited by Haagen Ringnes

“Man is a tragic animal. Not because of his smallness, but because he is too well endowed. Man has longings and spiritual demands that reality cannot fulfill. We have expectations of a just and moral world. Man requires meaning in a meaningless world.”

Peter Wessel Zapffe

Source: The Last Messiah (1933), To Be a Human Being https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4m6vvaY-Wo&t=1110s (1989–90)

“We come from an inconceivable nothingness. We stay a while in something which seems equally inconceivable, only to vanish again into the inconceivable nothingness.”

Peter Wessel Zapffe

Source: The Last Messiah (1933), To Be a Human Being https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4m6vvaY-Wo&t=1110s (1989–90)

“I myself am no longer very much afflicted by the thought of my own death. The synthesis, Peter Wessel Zapffe, did not originate until 1899. It was spared from immediate participation in the horrors of the previous years, and it will not miss what awaits mankind at the end of its vertiginous madness.”

Peter Wessel Zapffe

Source: The Last Messiah (1933), To Be a Human Being https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4m6vvaY-Wo&t=1110s (1989–90)

Peter Wessel Zapffe Quotes about death

“If one regards life and death as natural processes, the metaphysical dread vanishes, and one obtains "peace of mind."”

Peter Wessel Zapffe

Source: The Last Messiah (1933), To Be a Human Being https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4m6vvaY-Wo&t=1110s (1989–90)

“Death is a terrible provocation. It appears almost everywhere, presenting a stern but effective scale for both values and ethical standards.”

Peter Wessel Zapffe

Source: The Last Messiah (1933), To Be a Human Being https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4m6vvaY-Wo&t=1110s (1989–90)

“Death is the most certain and the most uncertain event there is.”

Peter Wessel Zapffe

Source: The Last Messiah (1933), To Be a Human Being https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4m6vvaY-Wo&t=1110s (1989–90)

Peter Wessel Zapffe Quotes

“The seed of a metaphysical or religious defeat is in us all. For the honest questioner, however, who doesn’t seek refuge in some faith or fantasy, there will never be an answer.”

Peter Wessel Zapffe

Source: The Last Messiah (1933), To Be a Human Being https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4m6vvaY-Wo&t=1110s (1989–90)

“Mankind ought to end its existence of its own will.”

Peter Wessel Zapffe

Source: The Last Messiah (1933), To Be a Human Being https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4m6vvaY-Wo&t=1110s (1989–90)

“The immediate facts are what we must relate to. Darkness and light, beginning and end.”

Peter Wessel Zapffe

Source: The Last Messiah (1933), To Be a Human Being https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4m6vvaY-Wo&t=1110s (1989–90)

“Why, then, has mankind not long ago gone extinct during great epidemics of madness? Why do only a fairly minor number of individuals perish because they fail to endure the strain of living — because cognition gives them more than they can carry? Cultural history, as well as observation of ourselves and others, allow the following answer: Most people learn to save themselves by artificially limiting the content of consciousness.”

Peter Wessel Zapffe

The Last Messiah [Den sidste Messias] (1933)

“Nobody has ever managed to explain what it is they are longing after in religion, but it is quite clear what they are trying to escape from – this earthly vale of tears, one’s untenable existential situation.”

Peter Wessel Zapffe book The Last Messiah

The Last Messiah (1933) <br class="br">Source: trans. Peter Reed &amp; David Rothenberg https://ia803202.us.archive.org/15/items/20200821_20200821_1659/OAP_Zapffe_Last_Messiah.pdf, page 8

“Each new generation asks – What is the meaning of life? A more fertile way of putting the question would be – Why does man need a meaning to life?”

Peter Wessel Zapffe

Source: The Last Messiah (1933), To Be a Human Being https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4m6vvaY-Wo&amp;t=1110s (1989–90)

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