The human need for meaning, in what can appear a meaningless world, is a cause for extreme pessimism, argued Norwegian philosopher Peter Wessel Zapffe. The little-known thinker and mountaineer gives voice to the darkest, most despairing of human feelings – and despite the heartache at the core of that voice, it is outstandingly beautiful. Sam Woolfe argues, what Zapffe forgets, is that human consciousness, although giving rise to the tragic in life, also gives birth to existential joy.

The Norwegian philosopher Peter Wessel Zapffe is little-known to most Anglophone readers. He was greatly inspired by Arthur Schopenhauer and has been called one of the “bleakest thinkers of all times and places”. Zapffe was also an avid mountaineer and a friend of fellow Norwegian philosopher – and originator of deep ecology – Arne Næss. His only major work is his doctoral dissertation On the Tragic (1941), which has still never been translated into any other language. Fortunately, though, we can familiarise ourselves with some of the themes and ideas expressed in this work through a short essay that Zapffe wrote, one of his few works to ever be translated into English.