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Existentialism & Life
Zapffe For A New Political Age
Cameron Hendy thinks it’s about time we all stopped.
Do you recall the first time that you stumbled across Peter Zapffe (1899-1990) – assuming that you ever have done? I do. His antinatalism – the idea that the human race should stop reproducing – was new to me at the time; simultaneously exhilarating yet terrifying. Reading Zapffe’s essay The Last Messiah was almost epiphanic – an intense moment that represented the crystallisation of my own nebulous philosophical position at the time.
To read The Last Messiah is to experience déjà vu, and revisit thoughts that tend to arise spontaneously due to the essential nature of human existence. Perhaps this is the best indicator of the fact that Zapffe touches upon a topic that seems instantly familiar to most of us: the inescapable, sometimes unendurable nature of merely being alive.
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