Philosophy and literature
Philosophers like Plato critiqued literature's ethical influence, while modern thinkers explore language's role in bridging minds and the truth in fiction, differentiating between the reality of characters and their narratives.
Much traditional discussion of aesthetic philosophy seeks to establish criteria of artistic quality that are indifferent to the subject matter being depicted.
Since all literary works, almost by definition, contain notional content, aesthetic theories that rely on purely formal qualities tend to overlook literature.
In more recent years, these epistemological concerns have shifted toward an extended discussion of words and meaning, exploring the possibility of language bridging the gap between minds.
The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche often articulated his ideas in literary modes, most notably in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, a re-imagined account of the teachings of Zoroaster.
Marquis de Sade and Ayn Rand wrote novels in which characters served as mouthpieces for philosophical positions, and acted by them in the plot.
Maurice Blanchot's entire fictional production, whose titles include The Step Not Beyond, The Madness of the Day, and The Writing of Disaster, among others, constitutes an indispensable corpus for the treatment of the relationship between philosophy and literature.
Arthur Schopenhauer, largely as a result of his system of aesthetics, is perhaps the most influential recent philosopher in the history of literature; Thomas Hardy's later novels frequently allude to Schopenhauerian themes, particularly in Jude the Obscure.
Jacques Derrida's entire oeuvre has been hugely influential for so-called continental philosophy and the understanding of the role of literature in modernity.
Arthur Schopenhauer's philosophy is noted for the quality and readability of its prose, as are some of the works of the British Empiricists, such as Locke and Hume.
In the play, Socrates appears hanging from a basket, where he delivers oracles such as: Early Taoist philosopher Zhuang Zhou expressed his ideas primarily through short literary anecdotes and fables such as "Dream of the Butterfly".
[1][2] The other major philosophers of the time appear as characters within these stories, allowing Zhuangzi to playfully explore their ideas and contrast them with his own, as he does with Laozi, Liezi, Hui Shi, and many others.
Eco's later novel Foucault's Pendulum became the forerunner of a run of thrillers or detective fiction that toss around learned allusions and the names of historical thinkers; more recent examples include Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code and The Rule of Four by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason.
Also, Philip K. Dick, who has often been compared to Borges, raises a significant number of philosophical issues in his novels, everything from the problem of solipsism to many questions of perception and reality.
Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land contains long passages that could be considered successors to the fictionalized philosophical dialogues of the ancient world, set within the plot.
