The book was compiled and titled by Kierkegaard's translator P. P. Hansen at the end of the 19th century as a result of his author's reworking of a large, multifaceted work by the Danish philosopher, theologian and writer - 'Either - or'. In its presented form, it is offered to a fairly wide range of readers as a philosophical reflection of the forerunner and founder of European existentialism about a person’s choice of life path, about the difficulties that he has to overcome in this case. The fate of existential ideas in the first half of the twentieth century is deeply and vividly discussed in the essay by the Russian emigrant philosopher L. I. Shestov, published in the same publication.