Camus Vs Kierkegaard

Literature and philosophy are often intricately entangled with one another to influence a written piece of work. In the years following the Second World War, the works of European philosophers despite doctrinal differences, shared the belief that philosophy begins with the human being, also known as existentialism. Existentialism claimed a significant presence within the literature of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Within the overarching existentialist movement there was a plethora of ideas that overlapped but were oppositional. Existentialist thinkers such as Soren Kierkegaard and Albert Camus at first glance may not express compatible ideas, but the two share similar views on the absurdity of life. Kierkegaard held the
As seen in his novel, The Concept of Anxiety, he gives two concrete examples of decision making. First, Kierkegaard asks us to imagine a man standing on a cliff or a tall building. “If the man looks over the edge, he experiences two different kinds of fear: the fear of falling, and the fear brought on by the impulse to throw himself off the edge” (“Dizziness of Freedom”). He says that the second fear that the man would feel is anxiety because he comes to the total realization he can choose to jump or not. His fear is as dizzying as his vertigo” (“Dizziness of Freedom”). This fear is found throughout many short stories, plays, and novels, not just solely in existentialist considered works. Hamlet, a Shakespearean play, shows how Hamlet, the protagonist, is caught on the precipice of a horrible choice. He can choose whether to kill his uncle or rather leave his father’s murder unavenged. Hamlet wrestles with the choice and freedom he holds to either murder his uncle or let him live. In that moment, Hamlet can choose to do “nothing or anything” (“Dizziness of Freedom”). He has the choice to kill his uncle or just walk away and because he can decide, the feeling of dread is followed afterwards. To Kierkegaard, the internal struggle is the definition of the dizziness that is created through decision making. In The Fall, Jean Baptiste goes back in time to recall a decision that he made years before. One night after he had been drinking a little bit he walked across a bridge to get home. On the bridge he noticed a woman standing on the side of it and when he walked past her, she jumped. Jean Baptiste heard screaming and splashing but did nothing. He let the woman commit suicide and when the story turned up in the newspaper the next day, he did not even