Søren Kierkegaard

Soren Kierkegaard is an existentialist philosopher who Camus claims begins with the perception that the world is absurd but ultimately escapes from that conclusion through religious hope. Kierkegaard believes in the inability of reason to understand the world—which is the fundamental claim of Camus' absurd reasoning—and comes to the inevitable conclusion, then, that true knowledge is impossible. However, he is uncomfortable with this claim and, as a result, characterizes man's rejection of reason as a kind of ultimate sacrifice to God. God's existence cannot be proven—since reason is flawed and useless—and therefore one abandons reason to God and irrationally has faith in him anyway: this is the famous "leap of faith." For Camus, however, this "leap of faith" is a betrayal of the principles which Kierkegaard begins his philosophy with and, therefore, is totally illegitimate. More than any...