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.
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) | Arabic |
| Voltaire | Candide | (1759) | Early example |
| Thomas Carlyle | Sartor Resartus | Canonical | |
| Goethe | Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship | Canonical | |
| Tolstoy | War and Peace | Canonical | |
| Robert Musil | The Man Without Qualities | Canonical | |
| Milan Kundera | The Unbearable Lightness of Being | ||
| Most of the novels by Albert Camus and Hermann Hesse | |||
| Most novels by Stanislaw Lem | |||
| Most novels by Ayn Rand | |||
| Aldous Huxley | After Many a Summer | ||
| Aldous Huxley | Island | ||
| Novels by Iris Murdoch, Anthony Burgess, Jean Paul Sartre, Andre Malraux, Marcel Proust, Stendhal, Fyodor Dostoyevsky | |||
| C.S. Lewis | Space Trilogy | ||
| 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 | ||
| David Foster Wallace | Infinite Jest | ||
| Giannina Braschi | United States of Banana | (2011) | Contemporary American philosophical fiction. |
Read more about this topic: Philosophical Novels
Famous quotes containing the words prominent and/or fiction:
“I should say that the most prominent scientific men of our country, and perhaps of this age, are either serving the arts and not pure science, or are performing faithful but quite subordinate labors in particular departments. They make no steady and systematic approaches to the central fact.... There is wanting constant and accurate observation with enough of theory to direct and discipline it. But, above all, there is wanting genius.”
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“Given that external reality is a fiction, the writer’s role is almost superfluous. He does not need to invent the fiction because it is already there.”
—J.G. (James Graham)