One of his most significant works, this approximately 10 pages long essay would later be expanded upon in Zapffe’s book, On the Tragic, and, as a theory describes a reinterpretation of Friedrich Nietzsche's Übermensch.
Zapffe believed that existential crisis or angst in humanity was the result of an overly evolved intellect, and that people overcome this by "artificially limiting the content of consciousness.
"[1] Zapffe views the human condition as tragically overdeveloped, calling it "a biological paradox, an abomination, an absurdity, an exaggeration of disastrous nature.
He concluded humanity "performs, to extend a settled phrase, a more or less self-conscious repression of its damaging surplus of consciousness" and that this was "a requirement of social adaptability and of everything commonly referred to as healthy and normal living.
Humankind will get increasingly desperate until 'the last messiah' arrives, "the man who, as the first of all, has dared strip his soul naked and submit it alive to the outmost thought of the lineage, the very idea of doom.