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, Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being, 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.
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.
- ^ Muhsin Mahdi (1974), "The Theologus Autodidactus of Ibn at-Nafis by Max Meyerhof, Joseph Schacht", Journal of the American Oriental Society 94 (2), p. 232-234.
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