Can this guy even be refuted?

Shut the fuck up. Faggot.

And the conclusion of this honesty is to...?

>Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature; but he is a thinking reed. The entire universe need not arm itself to crush him. A vapour, a drop of water suffices to kill him. But, if the universe were to crush him, man would still be more noble than that which killed him, because he knows that he dies and the advantage which the universe has over him; the universe knows nothing of this. All our dignity consists, then, in thought. By it we must elevate ourselves, and not by space and time which we cannot fill. Let us endeavour, then, to think well; this is the principle of morality.

I’ve read a biography about him, which includes excerpts from his diaries from the early 1900s to the early 1990s (I think I’m the only poster on Yea Forums who has done this, as it is an obscure book even in Norway), and while certain unrelated aspects of his thought can certainly be refuted, his pessimism can’t. Some people are simply too stupid or invested in coping to grasp his philosophy, but for the ones who aren’t, the pessimistic part of his philosophy CAN NOT BE REFUTED. Not because it’s objectively true, but because it accurately describes certain experiences, moods, states of mind and the coping mechanisms resulting from them. Also, he released several works which had nothing to do with pessimism, including collections of local jokes, poems, plays and angry newspaper articles

idk, probably an hero.
Have you ever read Ever Deeper Honesty?

drive.google.com/file/d/0B8owK7WpBz7WN1AtMDhybDJHcFE/view?resourcekey=0-DQIRfTXjoY7UjEUDCOlLLg

>have a festival coming up this weekend
Oh good. I sit here and look at my alesis kit, sad without its drummer. If there is a reason to go on, drumming is part of it.

Actual psychotic shit

>inb4 filtered, I don't give a fuck

>certain unrelated aspects of his thought can certainly be refuted

Can you be more specific? Are you talking about the materialism/evolutionary theory?

How is his pessimism different from that of Schopenhauer? How is it unique?

How would you even refute an emotional state user? The guy was obviously psychotically depressed, there's always an element of depressive mind states that are rational, but that doesn't make them good lol.

Last Messiah was one of the best written things I ever read, even in translation

Have you read him, user?

There is no longing or demand that the LORD cannot fulfill.

He enjoyed life a great deal, actually

He was in good health for most of his life and a well-known mountaineer

Yes? And most of it reads like a person who is very intelligent but suffers from suicidal depression, I know because I meet these people in my clinical practice all the time.

Yeah and that actually makes it worse, because then it means he actually didn't mean a word he wrote.

Have you considered depressive realism, dude? Who wouldn't be following his logic. What's left to enjoy in life after you see behind the curtain?

This is nonsense

Schopenhauer played the flute and owned a poodle. Does this make him less of a pessimist?

Yes it does actually. If you write a book about your own supposedly pessimistic philosophy of life that revolves around the negation of the Will and the next day you live a lavish bougie existence drinking and fucking prostitutes, this means you didn't actually mean a word you said.

Compare Zapffe's life to someone like Philipp Mainländer and you'll see immediately what I mean, but you're not going to do that lol.

Sure

Zappfe was above metaphysical bullshit, by the way. He was a materialist

If you (like me) had actually read his biography and diary entries, you would know that he spent decades locked in his apartment and had already attempted suicide twice by the time he was twenty. He was close to making it, but he failed. He also kept a revolver and deadly dose of morphine in case he wanted to try again. He constantly writes about how he wants to die and didn’t even have sex with any of his wives. It’s not like he always loved his life and wrote about pessimism just to pose

If anyone is wondering, he jumped out of a window and attempted to throw himself in the icy sea in a manner which would have guaranteed his death

Exactly, so instead of idolizing the guy, perhaps you should see a fucking psychiatrist?

I don’t idolize him for his suicidal ideation. I’m just saying the people calling him hypocrites because he didn’t manage to kill himself successfully or think he lived a happy life don’t know what they’re talking about

>didn’t even have sex with any of his wives
Wait, Zapffe didn't?
Zbro, I don't feel so good about this guy anymore.
I want a guy who laments life AND crushes puss.

They (not just his wives, other women as well) literally begged to fuck him, but he rejected all of them even after they married. It even ruined his first marriage, then he married a 20 year old woman at 40, a girl he had known since she was 15. Refused to fuck her too

I would've never known this because it was mentioned nowhere in his translated work. I would love to hear some more biography information.

Is it true that he was beaten by his parents?

Lmao, I can't help but admit it taints my image of him as a yoked Chad that fucked women and climbed mountains, living despite his tragic view of life

His mother never beat him, but his father whipped and beat him mercilessly and abused him psychologically throughout his childhood. The beatings could come out of nowhere, so he had no way of adjusting his behavior in order to avoid them. He never got over it

He even wrote something to the effect of “Why can’t I just get over it and fuck some women? I don’t know, maybe I should, but I want to remain pure and maintain my ascetic lifestyle”

Damn, that's rough on poor ol' Zap.

At what point does he discover philosophical pessimism and nihilism? Was his family religious?

His weird "purity" beef and his fucked-over childhood throw into question the objectivity of his life assessment.

To what use is an ascetic lifestyle if you're a materialist atheist? I thought of him as having more of an utilitarian/epicurian disposition

You're grasping for a cope here.

Maybe he had greater insight given these experiences. I bring up depressive realism again

His father and mother were Christian like most Norwegian at the time, but nothing extreme. It doesn’t say exactly when he discovered pessimism, but he became an atheist in his early teens (if not in his late pre-teens) and the pessimistic outlook soon followed
Zapffe wasn’t dumb. I can’t be assed to translate his diary excerpts right now but he knew that there was something contradictory about wanting to reject the world and it’s pleasures without having anything outside it to devote himself to. He was an imperfect human being with the same need for anchoring points and other copes as the rest of us

The parts of his diary where he doubts himself and is on the verge of going insane are some of the most beautiful pieces of prose I’ve read, by the way. If he had written novels, I’m one hundred percent sure he would have been considered a modernist master on the level of Hamsun

In what regard does he doubt himself? Does he ever confront the idea of God as he ages?

He studied science and biology proper, correct? I know he based most of his system on the research of a Norwegian biologist

test

Zone rare Zapffes

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some*

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>subjective
People do feel the need for meaning, though. This is not a hypothesis, it's a fact, just like it's a fact that they feel the need for romantic relationships and self-confidence. And since we live in a universe where objective meaning is impossible, just like permanence is impossible, man's need for objective meaning and for non-transient accomplishments is inevitably a failure.

It's this simple

Would love to see someone argue with this

He was painfully aware of the fact that his own philosophy was itself a coping mechanism, and that the rest of his life was just as shallow as anyone else's. Reading his diary entries, you get a sense of how the awareness of his own internal contradictions, along with his negative life experiences and the suffering they caused, was tearing him to pieces.
>Does he ever confront the idea of God as he ages
No, not really. He read the Bible and commented on it, and there's a play by him called The Prodigal Son which deals with the question of Jesus' historicity and nature as a human being. He also wrote a 200+ page philosophical dialogue on the problem of evil with a Norwegian church fire as his starting point and was very interested in Christianity in general, but he never reconsidered his atheist stance

You want to end suffering, what are you gay?!
-Q
I believe suffering is the best way to live, as it forms character; a human experience alike to art, beautiful. The why of life is beauty, and pain is the greatest source of it. Plus most human beings will not experience anything profound enough to merit his nihilism, as most are vacuously simpleminded.

This is one of his main arguments. Man is necessarily, due to his biology, a tragic animal. He is spiritually unfit for his environment, the universe.He wrote a long philosophical treatise called "On the Tragic" where he laid this argument out with autistic detail. Really beautiful stuff, but it hasn't been translated yet. Ibsen, one of Zapffe's inspirations (and about whom he wrote several essays and shorter texts, sadly untranslated) spoke about this as well when he had Brand say
>"(smiles as in recollection)
Two notions struck me as a lad
and sent me into fits of laughter
which, when the school-dame's mood was bad,
earned me a well-tanned hide soon after.
A night-scared owl was one farrago, 120
then a hydrophobic fish. I'd roar;
I'd try to jettison mind's cargo
but they'd hang on there, tooth and claw. —
What brought it on, this laughing fit?
Why, the obscurely-sensed deep split
between the thing itself as such
and thing as it should be ideally, —
between the having to, and merely
finding the burden all too much. —
Each countryman, fit state or foul, 130
is such a fish. or such an owl.
He’s fashioned for the depths and toiling,
should live life’s murk without recoiling,
and that’s what frightens him the more.
He flounders for the shelving shore, —
his own star-chamber, that he’ll shun,
and scream for "Air, and day's warm sun!"

Then the man has to realize that the struggle for permanence is more fulfilling than permanence. This is what the myth of sisyphus is about

This is painting a bleak picture. It's great having the picture of his life a little more complete. Appreciate you sharing with me, user.

Was most of his adult life better than his adolescence, at least? Does he consider suicide as an old man?

I know he lived a long life but it's hard to gauge if he was still sound of mind when he died at 90.

Camus is devasted by Zapffe

Just another futile cope

Where does Zapffe say this?

Is this from an interview?

>puerile comment
This is why I don't bother. Nurse your depression if that's what you really want to do.

>Was most of his adult life better than his adolsecence, at least? Does he consider suicide as an old man?
Well, kind of. He studied law (wrote his thesis in verse) and worked as a solicitor for a couple of years. He was good at his job, but ended up quitting and moving to Oslo to study art and literature. He had some friends, but remained awkward and secluded for most of his life. There are some beautiful diariy entries from his 30s where he writes about how lonely he is, and he really had it rough for years at a time, but he also had "fun". He spent a lot of time in nature, and his map was full of traced routes he had walked. He kept doing this until he turned 80. He also managed to get a house in the middle of nowhere with his wife, and they spent considerable amounts of time there. He tamed mice, watched sunsets, picked berries, all kinds of stuff. He also hung out with authors and other people from the intelligensia, but never liked the drinking and the pointless conversation. He loved chocolate and would have one (like a single piece) after dinner every day before smoking a cigar.... I could go on, but the point is that, like many other depressed people, he still did stuff and wasn't miserable 24/7
>Does he consider suicide as an old man
If he did, he didn't reveal it to anyone. He died of natural causes with his wife in his arms. He specifically asked her to lay down beside him, then he fell asleep and died shortly after
>if he was still of sound mind when he died at 90
It appears he was. He was a bit forgetful and struggled with communication, but he managed to write a perfectly coherent, Zapffean speech to be read at his own funeral

Zapffe's philosophy does deal a heavy blow to Camus' though

Oh and of course he ended up writing On the Tragic and being offered a job as a philosophy prof at the University of Oslo, but turned it down in order to be able to continue living the way he did. His diary entries from his time in small apartments around Oslo are incredibly comfy