The vital urge does not merely strive for existence but for a substantial, meaningful existence. The sense-experience in general becomes intelligible through an inherent purposefulness; we presume that the totality is ordered in accord with some higher meaning. Life's tragic character consists of the fact that this presupposition, this natural faith, is denied. A life ordered by purpose disintegrates; purposes conflict; no solution emerges; ideals collide. A vital question is set against another; the will to power against the will to knowledge; the feeling of community against the individual; life against death. No reconciliation takes place; irreconcilability becomes manifest.
Keeping the mind perpetually busy with petty tasks, entertainment, and sensory input so that it never has time to contemplate the abyss. zapffe on the tragic pdf
Peter Wessel Zapffe ’s philosophical work on the tragic, primarily articulated in his 1933 essay The Last Messiah and expanded in his 1941 doctoral dissertation On the Tragic The vital urge does not merely strive for