Tell me about Peter Wessel Zapffe’s book, The Last Mesiah (1933).
Recalled philosophical essay details and prepared comprehensive response.
The user is asking about “The Last Messiah” by Peter Wessel Zapffe from 1933. This is a philosophical essay by the Norwegian philosopher Peter Wessel Zapffe. I have knowledge about this work, so I can answer without needing to search.
Let me share what I know about this work.
“The Last Messiah” (Den sidste Messias) is a 1933 essay by Norwegian philosopher Peter Wessel Zapffe (1899–1990). It’s a compact but influential work in pessimistic philosophy, presenting Zapffe’s central thesis about the human condition.
Core Argument
Zapffe argues that human consciousness is over-evolved for our own good. We developed cognitive capacities—self-awareness, abstraction, the ability to perceive meaning and demand purpose—that exceed what’s necessary for survival. This creates a fundamental mismatch: we’re animals equipped with minds that can perceive the apparent meaninglessness, suffering, and inevitable death that define existence. The result is existential dread.
The Four Mechanisms
To cope with this “surplus consciousness,” Zapffe identifies four defensive strategies humans use:
- Isolation — compartmentalizing disturbing thoughts, refusing to let them connect into a coherent picture
- Anchoring — attaching ourselves to values, ideals, institutions, or goals that provide a sense of stability and meaning
- Distraction — keeping busy, filling life with activities and stimulation to avoid confronting the void
- Sublimation — transforming existential anguish into art, philosophy, or other creative work
The “Last Messiah”
The title refers to a hypothetical future figure who would preach the final truth: that humanity should voluntarily cease reproducing and allow itself to go extinct, as the kindest response to the tragedy of conscious existence.
Influence
The essay deeply influenced later antinatalist philosophy, most notably Thomas Ligotti’s The Conspiracy Against the Human Race (2010) and the work of David Benatar. It’s a foundational text in philosophical pessimism, building on Schopenhauer while pushing toward more radical conclusions.
It’s a short read—only about 10–15 pages—but remarkably dense. Are you coming to it from Ligotti, or through another route?
I’m coming from a screencap on twitter, sparked by Herzog’s meditation on the penguin wandering toward the mountains alone, from his documentary about the arctic:
The suggestion is that the penguin was seized by unnatural, existential impulses.
I am unfamiliar with “philosophical pessimism” as a school, although I am generally philosophically literate so I have read some books by Nietzsche and some essays by Schopenhauer, and typical pieces from mid-20th century existentialism.
Your summary suggests to me there might be a continuous school of philosophical thought which I am not aware of, perhaps one focused on the naturalistic, “angel on a bicycle” tension of the human condition.
Is that so? For instance, what does this chap Ligotti have to say?
Traced philosophical pessimism lineage from Schopenhauer through Ligotti’s existential horror.
The user is asking about philosophical pessimism as a tradition or school of thought, and specifically about Thomas Ligotti. They’re philosophically literate (Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, existentialism) but unfamiliar with this particular strand.
The Herzog reference is from “Encounters at the End of the World” (2007), his Antarctica documentary, where he famously asks a penguin researcher about penguin insanity and then films a penguin walking away from the colony toward the mountains—toward certain death. Herzog’s narration treats it as a kind of existential derangement.
Let me think about philosophical pessimism as a school:
The tradition roughly runs:
- Ancient sources (Ecclesiastes, Buddhist dukkha, Greek tragic pessimism)
- Schopenhauer as the founding figure of modern philosophical pessimism
- Eduard von Hartmann (Philosophy of the Unconscious)
- Philipp Mainländer (Philosophy of Redemption) - who took Schopenhauer further and argued the universe itself is dying, God committed suicide by creating the world
- Peter Wessel Zapffe
- E.M. Cioran (Romanian-French aphorist)
- Thomas Ligotti
- David Benatar (contemporary antinatalism)
Ligotti is a horror fiction writer (known for weird/literary horror in the tradition of Lovecraft but more philosophical) who wrote “The Conspiracy Against the Human Race” (2010), a work of pessimistic philosophy that draws heavily on Zapffe. The book argues:
- Consciousness is a evolutionary mistake
- We are “puppet” creatures, mistakenly believing we have selves and agency
- We use elaborate psychological defenses to avoid seeing the horror of existence
- The kindest thing would be for humanity to cease existing
Ligotti is influenced by Zapffe but also by horror literature and the notion of “cosmic horror”—that reality itself is malignant or at least indifferent in ways our minds can barely process.
The “angel on a bicycle” phrase captures something real in this tradition—the paradox of consciousness exceeding its biological function, our capacity for abstraction and transcendence creating a gap between what we are and what we know we are. This lineage of thinkers shares a common preoccupation with that gap, though it’s less formalized than other philosophical schools. The user seems genuinely engaged with the material, so I should provide substantive detail about both the broader tradition and Ligotti’s specific contribution to it.
Yes, there’s a genuine lineage here, though it’s more of a loose tradition than an institutionalized school—philosophers and writers passing the torch across generations, often discovering each other somewhat accidentally.
The Lineage
Schopenhauer is the modern founding figure. His claim that existence is driven by blind, purposeless Will, and that consciousness makes us aware of suffering without providing escape, sets the template. From him you get:
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Philipp Mainländer (1841–1876) — took Schopenhauer further, arguing that God existed but annihilated himself in creating the universe, which is now running down toward extinction. Humanity’s role is to accelerate this merciful end. He killed himself the day his major work was published.
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Eduard von Hartmann — tried to systematize Schopenhauer into a more complete metaphysics
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E.M. Cioran (1911–1995) — Romanian-French aphorist, wrote beautifully bitter fragments about the curse of being born. The Trouble with Being Born is his signature work.
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Zapffe — as discussed
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Thomas Ligotti and David Benatar — contemporary inheritors
Ligotti
Ligotti is primarily a horror fiction writer—literary weird fiction in a lineage from Poe through Lovecraft, but more cerebral and atmospheric. His stories deal with puppet imagery, the uncanny, the sense that selfhood is an illusion concealing something awful.
The Conspiracy Against the Human Race (2010) is his one work of straight philosophy. The central arguments:
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Consciousness as malignantly useless — Zapffe’s point, but Ligotti pushes harder. We’re not just over-equipped; consciousness is essentially a horror, a mistake that allows us to perceive our own puppet-nature.
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The “conspiracy” — refers to the collective human project of maintaining the illusion that life is worth living. All of culture, religion, meaning-making—it’s a vast unconscious conspiracy to avoid seeing what Zapffe and Ligotti claim to see.
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Puppet and uncanny imagery — Ligotti is obsessed with the idea that we’re not really “selves” but automatons who’ve developed the illusion of interiority. The horror isn’t that we might be puppets; it’s that we are puppets who’ve briefly glimpsed the strings.
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Anti-natalism — like Zapffe, he concludes that ceasing to reproduce is the ethical response.
The Distinction from Existentialism
The mid-century existentialists you know—Sartre, Camus, even Heidegger—share the diagnosis (we’re thrown into a meaningless universe, consciousness is a burden) but differ on the prescription. Camus’s “we must imagine Sisyphus happy” is a defiant affirmation. Sartre sees radical freedom as a kind of salvation.
The pessimist tradition rejects this move. They’d say the existentialists flinched—that “authentic existence” or “revolt” are just more sophisticated versions of Zapffe’s anchoring and sublimation. The pessimists insist on sitting with the conclusion rather than finding a way to affirm life despite it.
The Herzog Connection
Herzog fits naturally here. He’s drawn to figures who’ve glimpsed something about nature’s indifference—Aguirre, Fitzcarraldo, Grizzly Man’s Timothy Treadwell. The penguin walking toward the mountains is pure Herzog: an image of a creature seized by something its instincts can’t account for, marching toward death for no reason. Whether it’s “existential” in any real sense or just neurological malfunction doesn’t matter to Herzog—the image works as a symbol of the pessimist insight.
Would you like me to find more specifics on any of these figures, or on Ligotti’s book in particular?
I’m interested in learning more about any productive evolutions in this line of thinking. By “productive”, I do not mean currents of thought which terminate in an enjoyable perspective or in greater personal effectiveness. I don’t want to color the cards too much.
But what I’d like to avoid, is dwelling on lines of thought which wallow and glory in the pessimism for its own sake. Some European philosophy seems to me to be playing a rhetorical game where you score a victory point, and get to end the conversation, when you prove in a surprising way that something in life is actually worse or more corrupt than it appears.
I think that is true, that things are in fact often worse or more corrupt than they appear. But that is obvious to people who care to look, so it seems to me lazy and boring to regard that as a stopping point in the conversation.
What should come next is deeper exploration of the way things truly are, or the way appearances are deceiving, or how to respond to that situation.
So do some of the later developments in pessimistic philosophy answer that requirements? Or not really?
Assessed pessimism’s productive branches versus self-indulgent wallowing.
The user is asking a really good question. They’re not dismissing pessimism, but they’re asking whether the tradition has anything substantive to offer beyond the “gotcha” moment of revealing that life is worse than it appears. They want:
- Deeper exploration of how things truly are
- Understanding of how appearances deceive
- Thoughtful responses to the situation
They explicitly don’t want:
- Cheap rhetorical victories
- Wallowing for its own sake
- Lines that terminate in “isn’t it all awful”
This is a sophisticated philosophical question. Let me think about whether the pessimist tradition actually delivers on this.
Honestly… the tradition is somewhat thin here. Schopenhauer has some genuine metaphysical depth (the Will as thing-in-itself, the relation to Kant, the aesthetics). Cioran is brilliant but is largely doing the rhetorical game the user describes—beautiful aphorisms about how terrible existence is. Ligotti is interesting but also somewhat guilty of this.
Where might there be productive development?
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Buddhism - Schopenhauer was influenced by it, and Buddhism takes suffering as a starting point but then develops a sophisticated phenomenology of mind and practical responses. The user might already know this connection.
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Benatar - His antinatalism is at least trying to be rigorous rather than rhetorical. He makes logical arguments about asymmetry between pleasure and pain. Whether it’s good philosophy is debatable, but it’s attempting to be systematic.
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The phenomenological direction - If consciousness is the problem, what exactly IS consciousness? This connects to philosophy of mind. Metzinger’s work on the self-model theory of subjectivity has pessimist resonances but is doing real empirical/philosophical work.
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The naturalistic direction - If we’re “angels on bicycles” (over-evolved apes), then understanding our actual cognitive architecture becomes relevant. Terror Management Theory in psychology (Becker’s “The Denial of Death”) takes the pessimist insight and turns it into empirical research program.
Schopenhauer himself didn’t stop at diagnosis—he sketched out responses through aesthetics (art as temporary respite from the Will), ethics grounded in compassion, and ascetic resignation. Eugene Thacker’s contemporary work on cosmic pessimism attempts something similar, trying to think rigorously about a world indifferent to human thought rather than simply cataloging its horrors.
Ray Brassier’s “Nihil Unbound” takes this further, engaging seriously with extinction and meaninglessness while asking what philosophical work remains possible after accepting these premises. The tradition isn’t monolithic—some thinkers do indulge in beautiful despair (Cioran), while others pursue substantive directions: phenomenological investigations into consciousness itself, ethical frameworks built on suffering as fundamental, aesthetic theories of art’s role, and attempts to think at philosophy’s limits. Though I should acknowledge that certain figures like Ligotti, despite genuine insights, sometimes rely on rhetorical framing—the “conspiracy” element feels more constructed than necessary. The honest picture is mixed: some wallowing exists, but there are real intellectual threads trying to do more than that.
Your suspicion is warranted. Much of the pessimist tradition does terminate in the gesture you describe—the satisfaction of having proved the darkness, followed by aestheticized despair. Cioran is largely this: exquisite aphorisms about the curse of existence, but no development beyond the aphorism. Ligotti, for all his intelligence, is also somewhat guilty—The Conspiracy Against the Human Race circles the same insight repeatedly, and the “conspiracy” framing has a paranoid-rhetorical flavor that can feel like the game you’re describing.
That said, there are branches that attempt genuine further work:
Schopenhauer himself is better than his inheritors on this count. He doesn’t stop at the diagnosis. He develops:
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An aesthetics: art (especially music) provides temporary release from the Will’s grip, not by solving the problem but by allowing a different mode of consciousness—disinterested contemplation. This isn’t escapism; it’s an investigation of what consciousness can do.
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An ethics: if the fundamental fact is suffering, and if individuation is somewhat illusory (we’re all expressions of the same blind Will), then compassion follows naturally. Your suffering and mine aren’t ultimately separate. This gives genuine ethical content.
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A phenomenology of willing: he’s actually doing careful work on what it feels like to want, to strive, to be satisfied and immediately want again. The claim that satisfaction is merely temporary cessation of craving is an empirical-ish observation about the structure of desire.
Ernest Becker (The Denial of Death, 1973) takes the pessimist insight—that we’re animals who know we’ll die, and this is intolerable—and turns it into something like a research program. He synthesizes Kierkegaard, Freud, and Otto Rank to argue that most human culture is “immortality project,” elaborate symbolic structures to deny death. But he’s not wallowing; he’s trying to explain religious behavior, heroism, evil, love, neurosis, and war as downstream effects of this single problem. It’s ambitious and arguably productive—it generated Terror Management Theory in empirical psychology, which has produced actual experimental results.
Eugene Thacker (contemporary philosopher, In the Dust of This Planet and the “Horror of Philosophy” trilogy) is attempting something more difficult. He’s interested in the concept of “the world-without-us”—reality as it exists apart from human meaning-making. His question isn’t “isn’t it awful” but rather: what happens to philosophy when it tries to think something that’s constitutively resistant to being thought? Horror, for Thacker, isn’t a genre but a philosophical mode—an encounter with the limits of conceptualization. Whether this produces genuine insight or just sophisticated pointing at a wall is debatable, but he’s at least trying to do philosophy at the limit rather than simply declaring defeat.
Ray Brassier (Nihil Unbound, 2007) is more technical—coming from the speculative realism movement. He takes extinction, meaninglessness, and the indifference of nature as starting points and asks: what can philosophy still do? His answer involves stripping philosophy of its consolatory functions and treating nihilism not as a conclusion but as a condition to think from. It’s demanding reading and may or may not pay off, but it’s not wallowing.
The Buddhist connection is perhaps the most productive branch, though it predates and runs parallel to rather than developing from the Western pessimists. Schopenhauer recognized the affinity. Buddhism shares the diagnosis (existence is dukkha, craving is the engine) but then does extensive phenomenological work on the structure of mind and develops practical responses. It’s not optimistic in any cheap sense—the First Noble Truth is not retracted—but it moves forward into detailed investigation rather than stopping at the statement of the problem.
Honestly: if what you want is serious investigation of the human condition given that the pessimist diagnosis contains real insight, Buddhism and Schopenhauer are probably richer than the 20th-century literary pessimists. The latter tend to be better stylists than philosophers. Zapffe’s essay is genuinely interesting, but it’s eight pages; there’s no system behind it. Ligotti is a good horror writer who read some philosophy.
Does any of this point toward territory you’d want to explore further?
You can find me a link to Zapffe’s essay in its entirety please?
Thinking about locating Peter Zapffe’s philosophical essay online.
The user wants me to find a link to Zapffe’s “The Last Messiah” essay. I should search for this and find a reliable source where they can read the full text.
Peter Wessel Zapffe “The Last Messiah” full text
The Last Messiah - Wikipedia wikipedia.org
The Last Messiah I II openairphilosophy.org
Peter Wessel Zapffe The Last Messiah archive.org
The Last Messiah | Issue 45 | Philosophy Now philosophynow.org
The Last Messiah by Peter Wessel Zapffe (1933) — Studio Q Photography studioq.com
The Last Messiah | The Ted K Archive thetedkarchive.com
The Last Messiah by Peter Wessel Zapffe | Goodreads goodreads.com
Peter Wessel Zapffe - The Last Messiah - READ : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive archive.org
The Last Messiah - Open Air Philosophy openairphilosophy.org
The Last Messiah: A Tragic Reflection | PDF | Human | Soul scribd.com
Curated multiple scholarly sources for complete essay access.
I found several sources for the full text of Zapffe’s “The Last Messiah.” The best options appear to be:
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Philosophy Now - https://philosophynow.org/issues/45/The_Last_Messiah - This appears to have the full text with permission from Mrs. Berit Zapffe.
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Open Air Philosophy - https://openairphilosophy.org/the-last-messiah/ - This site is dedicated to Norwegian philosophy and has the essay, plus there’s a PDF version at https://openairphilosophy.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/OAP_Zapffe_Last_Messiah.pdf
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Internet Archive - https://archive.org/details/the-last-messiah-read - A public domain version
The Philosophy Now and Open Air Philosophy versions seem to be the most legitimate, scholarly sources.
Here are the best sources:
Philosophy Now has the full text with permission from Zapffe’s widow: https://philosophynow.org/issues/45/The_Last_Messiah
Open Air Philosophy also has it, with a nicely formatted PDF version: https://openairphilosophy.org/the-last-messiah/
The PDF direct link: https://openairphilosophy.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/OAP_Zapffe_Last_Messiah.pdf
The Philosophy Now version is probably the cleanest reading experience if you just want the text. The Open Air Philosophy PDF is the Reed & Rothenberg translation from Wisdom in the Open Air: The Norwegian Roots of Deep Ecology (University of Minnesota Press, 1993), which is the standard English translation.