Novelas filosóficas (Genre/Form Term)

Work cat.: Camus, Albert. Étranger. English. The stranger, 1993.

Wenke, J.P. Melville's muse : literary creation & the forms of philosophical fiction, ©1995.

Mikkonen, J. The cognitive value of philosophical fiction, ©2013.

Encyclopedia of the novel, 1998: index (philosophical novel, see conte philosophique; novel of ideas) conte philosophique (The conte philosophique (philosophical tale) is a short, usually satiric narrative whose characters and story illustrate a philosophical proposition. A synthesis of fiction and philosophy, the conte philosophique avoids the abstraction of logical argument by relying on allegorical characters and a fast-moving narrative freed from any concern with realism and psychology; reached its highest development with the short prose fiction of Voltaire; the more than 25 contes philosophiques Voltaire wrote between 1747 and 1774; in England, the closest equivalents to the genre are Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels and Samuel Johnson's Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia; if we emphasize the genre's narrativizing of philosophical premises, it may be seen as leading to a long and varied tradition that includes Guy de Maupassant's tales, the prose parables of Arthur Schopenhauer and Franz Kafka, such narrative illustrations of existential philosophy as Jean-Paul Sartre's La Nausée and Albert Camus' L'Étranger, Jorge Luis Borges' and Leonardo Sciascia's narrative meditations on the paradoxes of representation, and even Salmon Rushdie's distinctly Voltairean parodies of religious intolerance)

Encyclopedia of German literature, 2000: p. 791 (Thomas Mann's first novel, Buddenbrooks, is a work with naturalistic elements but is also a philosophical novel in the sense that it bears the imprint of Arthur Schopenhauer's thought in Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung; the essential Schopenhauerian plot is that the will comes to know itself and, astonished at its own activities, begins to inquire into its own character; existentialist themes in the work of Wolfgang Borchert)

Wikipedia, Jan. 1, 2016: List of genres (Philosophical fiction is 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 dark parts of human life.)

Best philosophical fiction, via Goodreads website, Jan. 4, 2016 (A fiction novel that has philosophical ponderings and concepts woven throughout the plotline, characters, and thematic backdrop; lists works by Albert Camus, Robert Musil, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Rainer Maria Rilke, Hermann Hesse, Voltaire, Friedrich Nietzsche, George Orwell, Ayn Rand, Jean-Paul Sartre, Aldous Huxley, Franz Kafka, Milan Kundera, Robert M. Pirsig and others)

Ryerson, J. The philosophical novel, in New York times, Jan. 20, 2011, viewed online Jan. 4, 2016 (novelists with philosophical backgrounds; philosophically trained novelists, including David Foster Wallace, William H. Gass and Clancy Martin; philosophers like Jean-Paul Sartre and George Santayana have written novels, while novelists like Thomas Mann and Robert Musil have created fiction dense with philosophical allusion; David Foster Wallace ... his most overtly philosophical novel--his first, The Broom of the System (1987), which incorporates the ideas of Ludwig Wittgenstein; David Markson, whose bleak, abstract, solitary novel Wittgenstein's Mistress (1988) ... praised for evoking the bleak, abstract, solitary feel of Wittgenstein's early philosophy; Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, whose latest novel is 36 Arguments for the Existence of God, treats philosophical questions with unabashed directness in her fiction, often featuring debates or dialogues among characters who are themselves philosophers or physicists or mathematicians; Clancy Martin's first novel, How to Sell (2009) ... disguised versions of Kant's argument on the supposed right to lie in order to save a life, Aristotle's typology of four kinds of liars, and Nietzsche's theory of deception)

Diamond, J. 10 great works of fiction for philosophers, via Flavorwire website, Nov. 7, 2013, viewed online Jan. 4, 2016 (Although he denied his affiliation with the movement, critics are generally inclined to say that Albert Camus was an existentialist. Born 100 years ago today, the author is responsible for Nobel Prize-winning classics like The Stranger and The Fall that sit at the top of the "philosophical fiction" pile. Philosophical fiction isn't always the easiest to define unless the author clearly states that there was a philosophical framework guiding the text, thus embedding that philosophy within the plot.)

What do you think is the best philosophical fiction?, via Reddit website, viewed Jan. 4, 2016 (works of fiction with philosophy as their basis/inspiration or where philosophy plays a significant role in the work)

ChatGPT, 22 junio de 2025 (Novela filosófica)

Fiction that emphasizes philosophical propositions.