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This book examines the significantly similar, yet finally different, thinking of two nineteenth-century existentialist thinkers, Soren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche. Its focus is on the different ways each envisioned a joyful acceptance of life - a concern they shared. Each strove to give a place to this acceptance in his picture of life, but their conceptions of it are far apart. For Kierkegaard, in Fear and Trembling, a joyful acceptance of life, as it is shown to us by Abraham and other 'knights of faith', flows from the certitude of faith. For Nietzsche, in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, it is an acceptance of the eternal recurrence of life, and is ultimately a matter of will. J. Kellenberger examines the ways in which these contrasting visions connect to other parts of Kierkegaard's and Nietzsche's thinking, especially regarding the place of religious belief and the place of morality in a fully realized life. Furthermore, he examines the presuppositions of each vision for our modern and postmodern world.