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.
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There is no universally acceptable definition of philosophical fiction, but certain works would be of key importance in its history.
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[1][2] | Early example |
| Yehuda Halevi | The Kuzari | 12th century | Early example; Arabic |
| Voltaire | Candide | 1759 | Early example |
| Thomas Carlyle | Sartor Resartus | 1833-34 | Canonical |
| Goethe | Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship | 1795-96 | Canonical |
| Tolstoy | War and Peace | 1869 | Canonical |
| Robert Musil | The Man Without Qualities | 1930-43 | Canonical |
| Milan Kundera | The Unbearable Lightness of Being | 1984 | |
| Most novels by Albert Camus | |||
| Most novels by Hermann Hesse | 1904-53 | ||
| Most novels by Stanislaw Lem | 1946-2005 | ||
| Most novels by Philip K. Dick | 1952-82 | ||
| Most novels by Ayn Rand | 1934-82 | ||
| Aldous Huxley | After Many a Summer | 1939 | |
| Aldous Huxley | Island | 1962 | |
| Novels by Iris Murdoch | 1953-97 | ||
| Novels by Anthony Burgess | 1956-93 | ||
| Novels by Jean-Paul Sartre | |||
| Novels by Andre Malraux | |||
| Novels by Marcel Proust,[3] | |||
| Novels by Stendhal | |||
| Novels by Fyodor Dostoyevsky | 1846-81 | ||
| 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. |
| Marcel Proust | In Search of Lost Time | 1913-1927 | |
| 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. |
| The stories of Jorge Luis Borges | |||
| The novels of Umberto Eco | |||
| Jostein Gaarder | Sophie's World | 1991 | |
| Yukio Mishima | The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea | 1963 | |
| David Foster Wallace | Infinite Jest | 1996 | |
See also
References
- ^ Jon Mcginnis, Classical Arabic Philosophy: An Anthology of Sources, p. 284, Hackett Publishing Company, ISBN 0-87220-871-0.
- ^ Samar Attar, The Vital Roots of European Enlightenment: Ibn Tufayl's Influence on Modern Western Thought, Lexington Books, ISBN 0-7391-1989-3.
- ^ Joshua Landy, Philosophy As Fiction: Self, Deception, and Knowledge in Proust, (2004)
External links
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