QuestionsShould we have children?The last Messiah: an excess of consciousness
Should we have children?Better never to have been

The last Messiah: an excess of consciousness

Zapffe, isolation, anchoring, distraction, sublimation

Peter Wessel Zapffe 1899 · 1990Sees human consciousness as an evolutionary excess: people bear it only by limiting it, and the only way out would be to stop passing on life.
See profile
What it claims

The only lasting way out would be to stop procreating: this is the message Zapffe gives the last Messiah ("be infertile and let the earth be silent after ye").

Why

Our consciousness shows us death and suffering, and we only mask it without curing the cause.

The same idea through history
Sophocle401 BCThe chorus of Oedipus at Colonus says that not to be born is best of all: a poetic cry, without a theory of consciousness.
Arthur Schopenhauer1851The same question put to reason: sparing those to come from existence, because life is mostly suffering.
Peter Wessel Zapffe1933Zapffe looks for the cause in biology: human consciousness would be an evolutionary excess, like the too-heavy antlers of a giant deer.
David Benatar1997Benatar reaches a similar conclusion by a very different line of reasoning, based on an asymmetry between pain and pleasure.
In short

"The last Messiah: an excess of consciousness" is an argument by Peter Wessel Zapffe (Peter Wessel Zapffe, "Den sidste Messias", 1933, 1933) on the question "Should we have children?" (answer: better never to have been). Its claim: The only lasting way out would be to stop procreating: this is the message Zapffe gives the last Messiah ("be infertile and let the earth be silent after ye"). According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P4). AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 1 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Peter Wessel Zapffe, "Den sidste Messias", 1933
Valid with an implicit premise

Zapffe, a Norwegian philosopher and mountaineer, sees human consciousness as an accident of evolution: people have become able to see their condition, their death and the suffering of the world clearly, and this lucidity is an excess, like the too-heavy antlers of a giant deer that end up crushing it. If the species has not died out, it is because most people protect themselves by artificially limiting what they let into consciousness: by isolation (not thinking about it), anchoring (clinging to a cause, a job, a family), distraction and sublimation (turning pain into a work). The essay ends with the figure of a "last Messiah" who would tell humans to have no more children and let the Earth fall silent after them. Zapffe describes this figure more than he tells anyone to obey: he also announces that the crowd will throw itself upon him. This site presents arguments and advises no one. If this theme touches you closely, talk to someone you trust.

P1In evolution, the human species was armed too heavily by spirit: its consciousness shows it its condition, death and suffering, and is a menace to its own well-being.
P2Most people survive by artificially limiting the content of their consciousness (through isolation, anchoring, distraction or sublimation).
P3These means do not cure the cause: they are a repression, more or less conscious, of the surplus of consciousness.
P4 · implicit premiseIf the human condition is a burden that each person can only mask, and that each new person will have to mask in turn, the only way not to pass it on is to stop procreating.
Therefore the only lasting way out would be to stop procreating: this is the message Zapffe gives the last Messiah ("be infertile and let the earth be silent after ye").

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P4, the computer finds a world where consciousness is an excess, where everyone must mask it, and where it is nonetheless not necessary to stop procreating: for example if the protections suffice for life to be worth passing on.
Valid with P4. P1 says consciousness is a painful excess, P2 that nearly everyone bears it by limiting it, P3 that this limiting solves nothing. P4 links this to procreation: since the burden can only be masked, the only way not to pass it on is not to bring anyone into being. Without P4, one can grant P1 to P3 and hold that a life made bearable by its protections is still worth passing on. This is the most debated point.
Analogy. Imagine a crew on a boat with a leaking hull: everyone bails constantly so as not to think about it. Zapffe says almost everyone lives like this. Then he asks whether one has the right to invite new passengers aboard.

Objections

3

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

Peter Wessel Zapffe (a tension within his essay) 1933 · attacks premise 3

Zapffe himself writes that sublimation can at times convert the pain of living into valuable experiences. If so, consciousness is not only a masked burden: it can also produce works that people find precious, and P3 becomes too strong. More awkward still: Zapffe says his own essay is an attempt at sublimation. The argument would then be, in part, an instance of the protection it describes.

Zapffe replies
Peter Wessel Zapffe 1933
Zapffe admits it: he writes that his own essay is a typical attempt at sublimation. He does not withdraw his argument for that: for him, sublimation is only one of the four protections.
Peter Wessel Zapffe 1933
He also limits the scope of sublimation: it is unlikely unless the worst of the suffering is already blunted by other means. It therefore already presupposes another protection, which, in our reading, fits his analysis rather than refuting it.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Our summary: open point. Zapffe himself sees the tension. It remains to be decided whether the fact that pain can be turned into a work weakens the argument (consciousness is not only a burden) or confirms it (even this effort is a protection).
Viktor Frankl 1946 · attacks premise 3

Frankl, a psychiatrist who survived the Nazi camps, holds that one can find meaning in suffering, and that this search for meaning is one of the main forces of the human being. In this humanist reading, seeing one's condition clearly is not only a burden to mask: it is also what makes commitment, love and responsibility possible. P3 would then be too bleak.

no reply
We have not yet found a direct reply by Zapffe in the texts.
The debate goes on (our summary) We found no text in which Zapffe answers Frankl. Zapffe might answer that finding meaning is precisely a form of anchoring or sublimation, so one of the protections he describes: but that is our reading, not a text of his. The basic disagreement: is a meaning found in suffering an answer to the human condition, or a way of masking it?
Where the debate stands (our summary)Our summary: open basic disagreement. No widely accepted answer decides between "giving meaning" and "protecting oneself".
Hans Jonas 1979 · attacks the conclusion

In The Imperative of Responsibility, Jonas holds that we have a fundamental duty that there be humanity in the future. For him, humanity is the only known being capable of responsibility, and its continued existence is therefore a moral requirement, whatever the sufferings of the human condition. If this duty is valid, the advice to stop procreating cannot be followed.

no reply
see the argument
We have not yet found a direct reply by Zapffe in the texts.
The debate goes on (our summary) Zapffe died in 1990, eleven years after Jonas, but we found no reply from him. The basic disagreement: does humanity have a duty to exist, or is duty measured by the persons who will be born and what they will live through? See Jonas's argument (jonas-responsabilite) in the same question.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Our summary: open point. Jonas grounds a duty to the future on responsibility; Zapffe looks at the suffering of persons. Neither route has produced a proof that compels the other.