Philosophical novel

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Philosophical novels are works of fiction in which a significant proportion of the novel 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 novels would include the so-called novel of ideas, including a significant proportion of science fiction, utopian/dystopian novels, and Bildungsroman.

There is no universally acceptable definition of the philosophical novel, but certain novels would be of key importance in its history. Ibn Tufail's Philosophus Autodidactus (12th century),^[1][2] Ibn al-Nafis' Theologus Autodidactus (13th century)^[3] and Voltaire's Candide (1759) are the first clear examples in literary history. Thomas Carlyle's Sartor Resartus, Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship, Tolstoy's War and Peace, Robert Musil's The Man Without Qualities and Sartre's Nausea are all canonical examples of the philosophical novel. Later examples would include such novels as Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead, Aldous Huxley's After Many a Summer and Island, as well as novels by Iris Murdoch and Anthony Burgess and C.S. Lewis' Space Trilogy. Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra is perhaps the most well-known example of a philosophical novel.

Novels that might qualify as philosophical novels in terms of subject matter but which proceed by non-discursive means (such as allegory) would be excluded. Richard Adams's Watership Down, for example, would qualify as having social structures as its subject matter but would be excluded on the grounds that the exploration of these subjects is entirely inferred rather than being the subject of overt discussion or debate.

The classification may also extend to other narrative media, such as film. The Matrix Trilogy, written and directed by the Wachowski Brothers, contains a number of dialogue scenes that appear to explicitly discuss philosophical concepts and their relationship to the human condition.[1] Other such films containing similar scenes include Mamoru Oshii's Ghost in the Shell duology. Or it can be used to describe a man who wakes up to be an insect one day like in Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis.

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