Let’s Read – Peter Wessel Zapfe: The Last Messiah

“The Last Messiah” (Norwegian: “Den sidste Messias”) is a 1933 essay by the Norwegian philosopher Peter Wessel Zapffe. One of his most significant works, this approximately 10 page long essay would later be expanded upon in Zapffe’s book, On the Tragic, and, as a theory describes a reinterpretation of Friedrich Nietzsche’s Übermensch. Zapffe believed that existential crisis or angst in humanity was the result of an overly evolved intellect, and that people overcome this by “artificially limiting the content of consciousness.” (from wikipedia).