# Novela filosófica

La novela 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 |
| Fiódor Dostoyevski | Crimen y castigo | 1866 | Canonical |
| Goethe | Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship | 1795–96 | Canonical |
| León Tolstói | 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 | Most novels by Albert Camus | | Absurdismo |
| Fiction by the Marquis de Sade | Fiction by the Marquis de Sade | 1740–1814 | Ateísmo, Nihilismo, Libertarianismo |
| Most novels by Franz Kafka | Most novels by Franz Kafka | | Existential Nihilism |
| Most novels by Hermann Hesse | Most novels by Hermann Hesse | 1904–53 | |
| The novels and short stories of Ursula K. Le Guin | The novels and short stories of Ursula K. Le Guin | 1959-2018 | Anarchism; Feminism; Socialism; Daoismo |
| Most novels by Stanislaw Lem | Most novels by Stanislaw Lem | 1946–2005 | |
| Most novels by Ayn Rand | Most novels by Ayn Rand | 1934–82 | Objetivismo |
| Novels and Plays by Samuel Beckett | Novels and Plays by Samuel Beckett | 1938–1961 | Absurdismo/Quasi-quietism |
| Novelas de Iris Murdoch | Novelas de Iris Murdoch | 1953–97 | |
| Novelas de Anthony Burgess | Novelas de Anthony Burgess | 1956–93 | |
| Novelas de Simone de Beauvoir | Novelas de Simone de Beauvoir | | Existencialismo, feminismo |
| Novelas de Jean-Paul Sartre | Novelas de Jean-Paul Sartre | | Existencialismo |
| Novelas de Andre Malraux | Novelas de Andre Malraux | | |
| Novelas de Marcel Proust | Novelas de Marcel Proust | | |
| Novelas de Stendhal | Novelas de Stendhal | | |
| Novelas de Fiodor Dostoievski | Novelas de Fiodor Dostoievski | 1846–81 | Existencialismo |
| Novelas de G. K. Chesterton | Novelas de G. K. Chesterton | 1874–1936 | |
| Novelas de Clarice Lispector | Novelas de Clarice Lispector | | |
| The stories of Jorge Luis Borges | The stories of Jorge Luis Borges | | Philosophical idealism, eternal recurrence, eternalism |
| The novels of Umberto Eco | The novels of Umberto Eco | | Semiotics |
| The novels of Rebecca Newberger Goldstein | The novels of Rebecca Newberger Goldstein | | Atheism; Feminism |
| Works by Franz Kafka Prize winners | Works by Franz Kafka Prize winners | | Kafkaesque Humanism and Existentialism |