Peter Wessel Zapffe. Drawing: Finn Graff

So we are supposed to believe that President Alberich is reading Camus and has conversations on the origins of French existentialism. Yeah, fine, whatever. The more he and his ilk are abusing this precious planet, the more I am drawn to an existentialist who makes Camus appear sanguine.

There is only one such, and his name is Peter Wessel Zapffe. Here is my imperfect rendition of a 1967 radio interview with NRK, as transcribed in the book Essays and Epistles. Enjoy.

I remember once on the Arctic Ocean. The steward came up on deck, saying: “You should come down to the lounge, Zapffe. They are arguing vehemently there.” “What is it about?” “When I left, they had come around to man.”

Interviewer: And so, perhaps, have we?

The human being is not only the bearer of philosophy; it is also at center stage as its object. As far as we can tell, it is the only being that is both alive and able to regard its life ‘as from the outside’. It can also view itself as an observer of itself, and so on in absurdum, i.e. until reason folds.

The animal seems to be naturally at one with its existence. This naturalness is broken in the human being. It can experience itself as an foreign guest.

Interviewer: And which are the consequences of that?

The world around us, and man with his I-experience and life-situation, come across as the complete mystery. We know nothing about the origin and the so-called ‘deepest nature’ of the universe. First we must ‘know’ what it ‘is’ to know, i.e., obtain a pair of shoes so tight that we can only get them on after wearing them for a week or so.

Interviewer: We really know nothing, then?

Within the mystery, reason can find relations of greater or lesser constancy. It orients itself, seeking to determine its position. It discovers, for instance, that classes and individuals both have finite life spans; a beginning and an end. We ourselves live within a parenthesis of iron between birth and death.

A basic fabric in the texture are innumerable pathways of origination. Nearby matter is entrapped and turned into wefts. It discovers that it has become a dog, an eskimo, or Peder Jensen in Thorvald Meyer’s Street. These have not chosen their form. Yet there they are. And here we have, perhaps, a possible foundation for ethics.

Interviewer: And what kind of difference does such an origination make?

There has arisen a synthesis, a potential, a high pressure. This persists for a while; dissolves; dissipates; and returns to the elements. While they endure, individuals have their own interest status. There is something they want, and something they do not want. Their ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ meet their destinies. Fortunate conditions yield a fortunate fate; unfortunate conditions an unfortunate fate. To assist them they have their equipment, their abilities.

Interviewer: And what if we regard man as such a synthesis?

Then it is natural to consider the extent and peculiarity of its endowment, relative to outer and inner conditions.

The rest of the living world seems to be geared exclusively for the survival of the species. Individuals only matter insofar as they serve this end. A large percentage of humankind appears to be similarly geared, both individually and collectively.

This notwithstanding, man has a surplus with respect to biological necessities. With the exception of viruses, it has overcome all its enemies, and the remaining animals exist at the mercy of man. Yet it is not content with being the last species standing. It rages forth toward the depths of future and past, and toward the boundaries of space.

Interviewer: But isn’t this just valuable?

Any realisation of active and receptive possibilities for living is experienced as valuable. Playing with the surplus can be harmless, but it can also collide with other vital interests. Think of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice. We are becoming more numerous than the planet can sustain. As we divide into groups, the one may obliterate the other five or ten times over. This matter that everybody talks about today is just as much a chromosome bomb.

Within, too, the pressure of possibilitites and ends can overthrow the balance. We do have paleontological precursors: lobsters unable to raise their giant claws anymore, deer with antlers measuring more than three meters.

Interviewer: But scientists complain that our abilities do not suffice. Everywhere are problems we are unable to solve.

Indeed; we live upon a silk wrapper of safety. Yet the surplus resides in the fact that we see the problems. Around the bonfire of knowledge, we perceive the darkness. Otherwise, the sheep would despair of its ignorance.

Interviewer: Apart from the extent, you mentioned the peculiarity of our endowment?

Some animals have relatively constant reactions to impressions. Humans are more ‘un-fixed’; we are forced to make conscious choices. This can mean a greater pressure than our health endures. Dogs may become hysterical when their food becomes associated with pain.

Interviewer: But in general, surely, things do come out well?

Then one does not only take a ’general’ view, but also a selective one. Costs are left out. The promenade on Karl Johan Avenue is more presentable than all the hidden conditions that are rather not mentioned. Such isolation is but one of many means devised to neutralise the disastrous effects of the surplus and the lack of fixation.

Interviewer: But surely, not everything is mere doubt and uncertainty?

Beside the lack of fixation, there are also some fixations, partly in fortunate directions and partly not. The latter ones are especially relevant to our worldview and our view of life.

Interviewer: How so?

The unique quality within the biotic world that we demand morality of our surroundings, and an adequate meaning to it all, that is something we can hardly relinquish. And yet, what we call Nature displays neither morality nor meaning. So the question, What is the meaning of life? is less fertile than, Why do we ask for the meaning of life? Cats do not.

Interviewer: Shouldn’t we ask?

To be sure, we see the very criterion of humanity in this question. But anyone who is able to abstain from it, and e.g. breed children without hesitation, has at least a more comfortable spiritual economy. We can imagine an eskimo who suddenly arrives at a boarding house in Lier. He is perplexed and understands nothing. Where is the ice, he queries, and where are the seals? Yet noone can answer, and so he leaves again. Thus has man come into a world estranged from the soul. He asks for the meaning of Life, finds none, and leaves again. Only the moon stares after him in bewilderment.

Interviewer: You say that Nature has no morality. Yet at least it is brilliant in its adaptations?

If nature is seen as brilliant wherever it succeeds, then it is also idiotic wherever it fails. If not idiotic, then it is not brilliant. The Mystery does not call for awe. It just is what it is.

Interviewer: What do you really mean by saying that something ’is’?

Shall we say a conjunction of an X and a property? X derives from the Mystery, and the property, at least in part, from the observer.

Protagoras intuited this when he called man the measure of all things. Berkeley created the sentence ‘esse est percipi’ – to be is to be perceived by a consciousness. It can be read in many ways, including one that coincides with Kant’s doctrine of ‘Erscheinung’. Another interpretation appears to be confirmed by the biologist Jacob von Uexküll: The endowment of each individual helps determine its image of the surroundings. With humans, we must then consider more than just the senses.

Interviewer: Can you explain this further?

We have all learned that the so-called ’secondary qualities’, the colour red and so on, do not inhere in the ’thing itself’ but are formed by light waves plus the eye and the brain. Yet we can go further and regard even the model ‘wave’ as a human artifact, emerging from X as it meets our mental constitution. And similarly with all our dear and familiar, indispensable and obvious categories, such as time and space, distance, form, unity, beginning and end, ugly and beautiful, small and large, infinity, good and evil, Yes and No, to be or not to be. We take them with us when we leave.

Of the rest, one cannot even say ‘it is X’; one must say simply ‘X’.

Interviewer: Would you say, then, that the moon is not shining when nobody sees it?

If someone says that the moon is shining when nobody sees it, then he acts as a secret spectator. For we ourselves bring one half of the light.

Interviewer: Do you find this worldview satisfying?

If we need an adequate meaning to it all, that need goes unmet to be sure. A madam asked her husband: “What did the doctor say?” “He thought it was cancer.” “But surely, you cannot be satisfied with that.”

Interviewer: What, then, about all those who seek something perfect, something absolute?

Imagine a group of castaways afloat on assorted wreckage in mid-ocean. One seizes the floor, saying: “Our situation is untenable. What must we seek for? The only true, genuinely perfect system of rescue!” ”What is that like?” says another. ”You have to ask? It is something that picks us all up of the water, dries and warms us, treats us to the best of food and puts us into a wonderful bed. Will you not join us in seeking this means?” “I don’t think so.” ”What will you do then?” ”I am floating on an oar. Over there is another. I will try to reach it, to get an oar under each arm.” ”And such a goal satisfies you! You poor, undemanding soul!”

Interviewer: Can one do without the hope for a life after death?

When saying the hope, one presupposes a world or a form of life that is adapted to one’s own needs. Otherwise, one would ask: Can you do without the fear of a life after death? And that, I can. Olaf Bull could have written: “I think of days like this, when I shall not live. Buses will run into the ditch – without me.” Today is one of the days he had in mind. Terrible – or what?

Interviewer: So death becomes merely a question mark in the light of this?

Only the way of it, but that is not ‘mere’. The verdict is not published until the execution has begun. Personally I regard the year 2050 much as the year 1850, when I was nothing but northern wind and potato-land, and the lethal pathways swept past me far away. I did not worry about the war in 1864, nor will I be concerned by what awaits our descendants.

Yet even the image of death depends on whoever has it. We cannot pronounce on aspects of existence without being seated in one of them ourselves.

And this is where the Mystery engulfs us.

More Zapffe here.