Meandering up the mountain . . .

Today is the birthday of Peter Wessel Zapffe (December 18, 1899 - October 12, 1990), meta-physician, author and mountaineer. He is oft referred to as a cheerfully pessimistic, mountain-climbing existentialist.

"Each new generation asks – What is the meaning of life? A more fertile way of putting the question would be – Why does man need a meaning to life?"
- Peter Wessel Zapffe

"Man is a tragic animal. Not because of his smallness, but because he is too well endowed. Man has longings and spiritual demands that reality cannot fulfill. We have expectations of a just and moral world. Man requires meaning in a meaningless world."
- Peter Wessel Zapffe

"I myself am no longer very much afflicted by the thought of my own death. The synthesis, "Peter Wessel Zapffe", did not originate until 1899. It was spared from immediate participation in the horrors of the previous years, and it will not miss what awaits mankind at the end of its vertiginous madness".
- Peter Wessel Zapffe

"If one regards life and death as natural processes, the metaphysical dread vanishes, and one obtains peace of mind."
- Peter Wessel Zapffe

Zapffe image source (1)