Novela filosófica

La ficción filosófica se refiere a las obras de ficción en donde una parte significativa del trabajo está dedicado a la discusión de cuestiones que suelen abordarse utilizando la filosofía discursiva. Este tipo de obras puede explorar cualquier tema de la condición humana, incluyendo la función y el papel de la sociedad, la naturaleza y motivación de los actos humanos, el propósito de la vida, la ética o la moral, el papel del arte en la vida humana, el rol de la experiencia o la razón en el desarrollo del conocimiento, si existe el libre albedrío, o cualquier otro tema de interés filosófico. Asimismo, a este género pertenecen las llamadas «novelas de ideas», que incluyen una proporción significativa de géneros como la ciencia ficción, la ficción utópica y distópica y el Bildungsroman. El modus operandi suele utilizar primeramente una historia normal para entonces comenzar simplemente a explicar las partes difíciles u oscuras de la vida humana.

Sus precedentes son tan antiguos como los propios diálogos de Platón, pero en sentido más concreto, esta narrativa florece bajo la escritura de Voltaire o Jonathan Swift. En la primera mitad del siglo XX autores tan diversos como Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse, existencialistas franceses como Jean Paul Sartre o Albert Camus, o autores distópicos como Aldous Huxley o George Orwell llevaron este tipo de ficción a su más elevado desarrollo. En la narrativa española, la Generación del 98 con Unamuno, Pío Baroja o Azorín abren el camino a este tipo de obras. En la tradición hispanoamericana, Jorge Luis Borges lleva el género a una de sus cimas más importantes y abstractas. La tradición de la novela de ciencia ficción, de la mano de Stanislav Lem, Arthur C. Clarke o Asimov, también introducirían ideas filosóficas en muchas de sus obras.

Ejemplos

Autor	Nombre	Fecha	Notas
Augustine of Hippo	De Magistro	4th century	Early example
Abelard	Dialogue of a Philosopher with a Jew and a Christian	12th century	Early example
Ibn Tufail	Hayy ibn Yaqdhan	12th century​​	Early example; explores the limits of natural theology and the Islamic concept of fitra.
Yehuda Halevi	The Kuzari	12th century	Early example
Thomas More	Utopia	1516	Early example, first unambiguous example of utopian and dystopian fiction.
Voltaire	Zadig	1747	Early example
Voltaire	Micromegas	1752
Voltaire	Candide	1759	Early example
Samuel Johnson	Rasselas	1759
Jean-Jacques Rousseau	Julie, or the New Heloise	1761	Early example
James Hogg	The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner	1824
Walter Pater	Marius the Epicurean	1885
Thomas Carlyle	Sartor Resartus	1833–34	Canonical
Fyodor Dostoevsky	Crime and Punishment	1866	Canonical
Goethe	Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship	1795–96	Canonical
Leo Tolstoy	Guerra y paz	1869	Canonical
Giacomo Leopardi	Small Moral Works	1827	Philosophical stories that were greatly enjoyed even by Arthur Schopenhauer.
Robert Musil	The Man Without Qualities	1930–43	Canonical
Milan Kundera	La insoportable levedad del ser	1984
Aldous Huxley	After Many a Summer	1939
Aldous Huxley	Brave New World	1932	A critique on the conflict between the human element and animal nature of man as well as the manipulative use of psychological conditioning.
Aldous Huxley	Island	1962
C. S. Lewis	Space Trilogy	1938, 1943, 1945	Una crítica del socialismo al estilo estalinista
Søren Kierkegaard	Diary of a Seducer	1843	A novel in the highly literary philosophical work Either/Or.
Friedrich Nietzsche	Thus Spoke Zarathustra	1885	Well-known example of a modern philosophical novel.
Leo Tolstoy	Resurrection	1899
Samuel Beckett	Waiting for Godot	1952	One of the most well-known philosophical plays of the twentieth century.
Louis-Ferdinand Céline	Journey to the End of the Night	1932
Marcel Proust	In Search of Lost Time	1913–1927
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry	The Little Prince	1943
André Malraux	Man's Fate	1933
Thomas Mann	The Magic Mountain	1924
Franz Kafka	The Trial	1925
George Orwell	Animal Farm	1945	A fictional drama on the process of communism represented through animals on a farm.
B. F. Skinner	Walden Two	1948
George Orwell	Nineteen Eighty-Four	1949	A critique of totalitarianism as well as a discourse on the manipulative use of language.
Anthony Burgess	A Clockwork Orange	1962	A discussion of the role of free will in the context of the application of behaviorism's techniques.
Philip K. Dick	Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?	1968
John Gardner	Grendel	1971	An exploration of various philosophical perspectives on finding meaning in the world, the power of literature and myth, and the nature of good and evil. The protagonist is a literary proxy for Jean-Paul Sartre.
Philip K. Dick	A Scanner Darkly	1977
Philip K. Dick	VALIS	1981	A novel version of his longer non-fiction book The Exegesis, outlining his intense interest in the nature of reality, metaphysics and religion.
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.
Ralph Ellison	Invisible Man	1952	Existencialismo en América
Simone de Beauvoir	She Came to Stay	1943	An existential novel outlining Simone de Beauvoir's philosophy.
Simone de Beauvoir	fr	1944	An existential play outlining Simone de Beauvoir's philosophy.
Simone de Beauvoir	All Men are Mortal	1946	An existential novel outlining Simone de Beauvoir's philosophy.
Osamu Dazai	No Longer Human	1948
Walker Percy	The Moviegoer	1961	An existential novel outlining Søren Kierkegaard's philosophy.
Yukio Mishima	The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea	1963
José Lezama Lima	Paradiso (novel)	1966	Latin American Boom novel that explores desire in pre-revolution Cuba.
Robert M. Pirsig	Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance	1974	Pirsig's Metaphysics of Quality
Renata Adler	Speedboat	1976
Margaret Atwood	The Handmaid's Tale	1985	Novela distópica feminista
David Markson	Wittgenstein's Mistress	1988	An experimental novel that demonstrates Wittgenstein's philosophy of language; stylistic similarities to Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.
Jostein Gaarder	Sophie's World	1991
David Foster Wallace	Infinite Jest	1996	Criticizes Poststructuralism/Postmodernism; influenced by Wittgenstein & Existentialism; introduces Metamodernism/Post-postmodernism.
Arthur Asa Berger	Postmortem for a Postmodernist	1997	A murder mystery that explores postmodernism.
Gus Van Sant	Pink	1997	Absurdismo
Arturo Pérez-Reverte	El pintor de batallas	2006	Reflexiones sobre la guerra, la pintura y la condición humana.
Neal Stephenson	Anathem	2008	Includes the philosophical debate between Platonic realism and nominalism.
André Alexis	Fifteen Dogs	2015	Winner of the 2015 Scotiabank Giller Prize, this novel explores faith, place, love, power and hatred through the eyes and experiences of fifteen dogs endowed with human intelligence.
Most novels by Albert Camus			Absurdismo
Fiction by the Marquis de Sade		1740–1814	Ateísmo, Nihilismo, Libertarianismo
Most novels by Franz Kafka			Existential Nihilism
Most novels by Hermann Hesse		1904–53
The novels and short stories of Ursula K. Le Guin		1959-2018	Anarchism; Feminism; Socialism; Daoismo
Most novels by Stanislaw Lem		1946–2005
Most novels by Ayn Rand		1934–82	Objetivismo
Novels and Plays by Samuel Beckett		1938–1961	Absurdismo/Quasi-quietism
Novelas de Iris Murdoch		1953–97
Novelas de Anthony Burgess		1956–93
Novelas de Simone de Beauvoir			Existencialismo, feminismo
Novelas de Jean-Paul Sartre			Existencialismo
Novelas de Andre Malraux
Novelas de Marcel Proust​
Novelas de Stendhal
Novelas de Fiodor Dostoievski		1846–81	Existencialismo
Novelas de G. K. Chesterton		1874–1936
Novelas de Clarice Lispector
The stories of Jorge Luis Borges			Philosophical idealism, eternal recurrence, eternalism
The novels of Umberto Eco			Semiotics
The novels of Rebecca Newberger Goldstein			Atheism; Feminism
Works by Franz Kafka Prize winners			Kafkaesque Humanism and Existentialism

Referencias

• Datos: Q2016518
• Multimedia: Philosophical novels / Q2016518