Philosophical fiction

Philosophical fiction
Features	Significant proportion devoted to discussion of questions normally addressed in discursive philosophy
Subgenres
Novel of ideas

Philosophical fiction refers to works of fiction in which a significant proportion of the work is devoted to a discussion of the sort of questions normally addressed in discursive philosophy. These might include the function and role of society, the purpose of life, ethics or morals, the role of art in human lives, and the role of experience or reason in the development of knowledge. Philosophical fiction works would include the so-called novel of ideas, including a significant proportion of science fiction, utopian and dystopian fiction, and Bildungsroman. The modus operandi seems to be to use a normal story to simply explain difficult and/or dark parts of human life.

Prominent philosophical fiction

This is only a list of some major philosophical fiction. For all philosophical novels, see Category:Philosophical novels.

There is no universally acceptable definition of philosophical fiction, but certain works would be of key importance in its history.

Many philosophers write novels, plays, or short fiction in order to demonstrate or introduce their ideas. Common ones include: Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, Ayn Rand, Albert Camus, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Fyodor Dostoyevsky. Authors who are fans or followers of certain philosophers tend to incorporate many of their ideas in their novels, but they are not necessarily considered philosophical novels. Generally a novel needs to explicitly reference and discuss many philosophical ideas before it can be considered a philosophical novel. Some of these examples include: The Moviegoer (Kierkegaard), Wittgenstein's Mistress (Wittgenstein), and Speedboat (post-structuralism).

A borderline case is that of Plato's Socratic dialogues; while possibly based on real events, it is widely accepted that with a few exceptions (the most likely being the Apology), the dialogues were entirely Plato's creation. On the other hand, the "plot" of these dialogues consist of men discussing philosophical matters, so the degree to which they fall into what moderns would recognize as "fiction" is rather unclear.

Author	Name	Date	Notes
St. Augustine	De Magistro	4th century	Early example
Abelard	Dialogue of a Philosopher with a Jew and a Christian	12th century	Early example
Ibn Tufail	Philosophus Autodidactus	12th century	Early example
Yehuda Halevi	The Kuzari	12th century	Early example; Arabic
Voltaire	Zadig	1747	Early example
Voltaire	Candide	1759	Early example
J.-J. Rousseau	Julie, or the New Heloise	1761	Early example
James Hogg	The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner	1824
Thomas Carlyle	Sartor Resartus	1833-34	Canonical
Goethe	Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship	1795-96	Canonical
Leo Tolstoy	War and Peace	1869	Canonical
Robert Musil	The Man Without Qualities	1930-43	Canonical
Milan Kundera	The Unbearable Lightness of Being	1984
Aldous Huxley	After Many a Summer	1939
Aldous Huxley	Island	1962
C.S. Lewis	Space Trilogy	1938, 1943, 1945
Søren Kierkegaard	Diary of a Seducer	1843	A novel in the highly literary philosophical work Either/Or.
Friedrich Nietzsche	Thus Spoke Zarathustra	1885	Perhaps the most well-known example of a modern philosophical novel.
Leo Tolstoy	Resurrection	1899
Samuel Beckett	Waiting for Godot	1952	One of the most well-known philosophical plays of the twentieth century.
Louis-Ferdinand Céline	Journey to the End of the Night	1932
Marcel Proust	In Search of Lost Time	1913–1927
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry	The Little Prince	1943
André Malraux	Man's Fate	1933
Franz Kafka	The Trial	1925
Philip K. Dick	Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?	1968
Philip K. Dick	A Scanner Darkly	1977
Philip K. Dick	VALIS	1981	A novel version of his longer non-fiction book The Exegesis, outlining his intense interest in the nature of reality, metaphysics and religion.
Jean-Paul Sartre	Nausea	1938
Jean-Paul Sartre	No Exit	1944	An existentialist play outlining Sartrean philosophy.
Jean-Paul Sartre	The Devil and the Good Lord	1951	An existentialist play outlining Sartrean philosophy.
Simone de Beauvoir	She Came to Stay	1943	An existential novel outlining Simone de Beauvoir's philosophy.
Simone de Beauvoir	Les Bouches Inutiles	1944	An existential play outlining Simone de Beauvoir's philosophy.
Simone de Beauvoir	All Men are Mortal	1946	An existential novel outlining Simone de Beauvoir's philosophy.
Osamu Dazai	No Longer Human	1948
Walker Percy	The Moviegoer	1961	An existential novel outlining Søren Kierkegaard's philosophy.
Jostein Gaarder	Sophie's World	1991
Yukio Mishima	The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea	1963
David Markson	Wittgenstein's Mistress	1988	An experimental novel that demonstrates Wittgenstein's philosophy of language; stylistic similarities to Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.
David Foster Wallace	Infinite Jest	1996	Criticizes Poststructuralism/Postmodernism; influenced by Wittgenstein & Existentialism; introduces Metamodernism/Post-postmodernism.
Most novels by Albert Camus			Absurdism
Most novels by Franz Kafka			Existential Nihilism
Most novels by Hermann Hesse		1904-53
Most novels by Stanislaw Lem		1946-2005
Most novels by Ayn Rand		1934-82	Objectivism
Plays by Samuel Beckett		1938 - 1961	Absurdism
Novels by Iris Murdoch		1953-97
Novels by Anthony Burgess		1956-93
Novels by Simone de Beauvoir			Existentialism; Feminism
Novels by Jean-Paul Sartre			Existentialism
Novels by Andre Malraux
Novels by Marcel Proust
Novels by Stendhal
Novels by Fyodor Dostoyevsky		1846-81	Existentialism
Novels by G. K. Chesterton		1874-1936
Novels by Clarice Lispector
The stories of Jorge Luis Borges			Classical Liberalism
The novels of Umberto Eco			Semiotics
The novels of Rebecca Newberger Goldstein			Atheism; Feminism

See also

• Philosophy and literature

External links

• What is a philosophical novel?