5 stories that teach you philosophy (better than some philosophy books)
Want to study philosophy but skip some of its heavier tomes? These five novels are a great place to start. (Existential despair guaranteed.)
This week, Big Think Books regular Scotty Hendricks counts down five stories that make philosophy fun and accessible. Next week, Sam Kean joins us to discuss his new book, Dinner with King Tut!
By Scotty Hendricks
Philosophy is a rewarding discipline to study. Actually reading philosophy? That can sometimes be a slog through scholastic drudgery. Some of Immanuel Kant’s works could be prescribed as a cure for insomnia, and Georg Hegel’s writing is so arcane that Bertrand Russell argued he deliberately obscured his meaning to hide the absurdity of his ideas.
If you want to dive into some philosophy but aren’t in the mood for its heavier tomes, you can find many excellent fiction stories that explore philosophical ideas in accessible and enjoyable ways. Here, we’ll explore five such stories, investigating ideas from alienation to metaphysics. (Also, some spoilers.)
“The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” by Ursula K. Le Guin (1973)
As we did without clergy, let us do without soldiers. The joy built upon successful slaughter is not the right kind of joy; it will not do; it is fearful and it is trivial.
Ursula K. Le Guin was an American novelist who wrote primarily in the science fiction and fantasy genres. She is well known for the Earthsea series and the Hainish Cycle of novels. Her stories explore themes such as feminism, religion, political philosophy, and gender performativity. Never afraid to take a bold stance, she wrote of an anarchist utopia and a post-gender society while still finding the time to co-invent the solarpunk aesthetic. If you haven’t read her, you should.
“The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” is a short story focusing entirely on a philosophical issue. Specifically, it presents a full-throated argument against utilitarianism.
The story begins in Omelas, a fantastically splendid city, on the summer solstice. It’s a day of joyous celebration, though it’s not much different from any other in the blissful utopia. Despite all the happiness, Omelas houses a dark secret — one its citizens only learn of when they come of age and which is the price the city must pay for its unrivaled splendor.
We won’t spoil the secret here except to say it involves the immense suffering of an innocent person. The last part of the story questions whether this tradeoff is acceptable, focusing on those who don’t believe it is: the ones who walk away.
The story is a rebuttal of utilitarianism, an ethical philosophy that encourages people to promote the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. In its classical form, as advanced by Jeremy Bentham, any form of pleasure is equal to any other (the same is true of pain). Sounds reasonable, but the outlook can lead to some uncomfortable thought experiments. For instance, would you kill one person and harvest their organs if it meant saving five people’s lives? Utilitarianism suggests you should do so since five lives are worth more than one. It’s simple math.
What about Omelas? The story’s narrator is unsure of the morality of what goes on. They do comment on the incredible sight of those who object. Is utopia worth the price? Can mass happiness outweigh pointless misery? Ask the ones who walk away.
As “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” is a short story — despite having once been published as a standalone book — you can read it in an evening (and right here if you’d like).
Dream of the Red Chamber by Cao Xueqin (1791)
Truth becomes fiction when the fiction’s true; Real becomes not-real when the unreals real.
Dream of the Red Chamber, also known as The Story of the Stone, is an 18th-century novel. It is considered one of the great classic Chinese novels, alongside Journey to the West and Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Featuring dozens of major characters and hundreds of minor ones, Dream of the Red Chamber is justly praised for the psychological depth of its cast and the natural way they interact with each other and their world.
Written as the High Qing Era drew to a close, it depicts a sentient stone left out of heaven that learns about the world as it is carried by a Buddhist monk and Taoist priest. This frames an episodic dive into the lives of two great aristocratic houses in an unnamed Chinese capital. Typically described as a romance, much of the novel follows a love triangle, though it is also held in regard for its depiction of life during the Qing dynasty.
But while the novel enjoys great attention for its depiction of Chinese life at the time, it makes space to explore philosophical ideas across its hundreds of pages. The presence of a Buddhist and a Taoist at the beginning is no accident. An important theme in the story is the general decline of the Aristocratic Jia (賈) family from the heights of opulence to poverty and obscurity.
Both Buddhism and Taoism, two of the three great Chinese religions, encourage followers to look beyond the material. This point arises often in the story. The Jia family, whose surname is a homophone for “family” but which uses a character shared with “to do business,” frequently finds its members consumed by material and earthly matters.
In both religions, the source of suffering is the split between what we have and desire. In Buddhism, desire (better translated as “craving”) for material objects and certain mental states is one of the root causes of suffering. The Eightfold Path of Buddhism seeks to provide a way to extinguish craving and, with it, suffering. In Taoism, detachment from desire is encouraged alongside Wu wei, effortless action in line with the Tao. While less clear-cut regarding ethical advice, it still suggests more reflection and less chasing of wealth.
If the Jia family had followed this advice — or rather, if more of them had — things might have turned out better for everyone. Of course, they might never have had a chance living in a dynasty whose name is a homophone for “情,” (desire, affection, emotions, and sentiments).
Due to the age of the text, many early English translations are freely available.
Solaris by Stanisław Lem (1961)
Where there are no men, there cannot be motives accessible to men.
Stanisław Lem was a 20th-century Polish author. In the 1970s, he was one of the world’s most widely read science fiction authors, but he also found time to write philosophical essays. His novels address serious philosophical issues, too, including problems of mind, communication, and the human condition in a vast cosmos. Solaris is his best-known work.
The 1961 novel follows a group of astronauts trying to communicate with the planet Solaris. The planet appears to be entirely covered in a living plasma. Yet, despite a century of trying, researchers still don’t know if the life form is sentient and, if so, whether it can be communicated with or has any genuine interest in talking.
The novel begins when a new scientist, Kris Kelvin, arrives at the space station orbiting the planet, only to find one other scientist dead and the other two acting strangely. The arrival of something that looks and acts like Kelvin’s late girlfriend complicates matters. Eventually, it becomes clear that the planet is trying to communicate with them by creating images from the scientists’ minds, but whether the planet understands what it is doing and what it might be trying to say is unresolved.
Setting aside the familiar trope of trying to understand aliens, the problem of other minds — that is, the issue of whether there are other minds and how somebody could know that — is a sticky one in philosophy. Rene Descartes asked it back in the 17th century. If we still have trouble determining if other human beings have minds (or if they only act like they do), how could we determine if alien lifeforms have them?
Lem addresses this problem head-on. The alien doesn’t look like it’s alive, doesn’t think in a way humans can comprehend, and may or may not be aware of the effects its actions have on the human characters. The story’s point is that we can’t know what’s on its mind, even if it has one. The implications of this for humanity, science, and the universe are considered in the story. In fact, Solaris is so alien that, despite being the title character, most book reviews don’t list it as one.
This book was translated into English recently enough to still be under copyright. We recommend trying the 2011 translation, as did Lem’s family. There are also two film versions (the 1972 one is better), a television play, several stage productions, and four operas based on the novel.
In 2019, Poland named the star BD+14 4559 “Solaris” in honor of the novel. No word from it yet.
Candide: Or, Optimism by Voltaire (1759)
If this is the best of all possible worlds, what are the others?
François-Marie Arouet, better known by his pen name Voltaire, was a French Enlightenment philosopher. His vast bibliography includes numerous letters, pamphlets, plays, and novels. One of the funniest is certainly Candide: or, the Optimist. Imagine if the Monty Python trope were one French guy writing in the 18th century, and you’ll have a sense of Voltaire’s humor.
The story follows the life of Candide, the illegitimate son of a Germanic Baron who is said to have a simple mind and a face to match. His father’s castle hosts a professor of “metaphysic-theologo-cosmolonigology” who supports the Leibnizian notion that we live in “the best of all possible worlds.”
The remainder of the episodic novel details the misadventures of the cast as they endure proof after proof that this cannot possibly be the best world. The cavalcade of misfortune includes an unexpected run-in with the Portuguese Inquisition, a wretched stint in South America, plagues, war, slavery, natural disaster, a stop-off in England, and other nightmares. By the end, the title character is utterly disillusioned and content to “cultivate their garden.”
If it isn’t apparent, Candide is a dress-down of Leibniz’s optimism. Leibniz, a German polymath of the late 17th century, argued that because God is all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good, He would create the ideal world — after all, He would know if there was a better option and would have the motivation and capacity to create that one instead. This optimism disgusted Voltaire, as it trivialized the immense suffering in the world as the least amount logically possible.
Indeed, as the novel goes on, Leibniz is not only directly referenced but blasted for being full of it. Many of the evils experienced in the book were very real, including the 1755 Lisbon earthquake that killed 50,000 people.
Several public domain translations are available, and Leonard Bernstein also composed an opera adaptation.
The Trial by Franz Kafka (1925)
Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K., for without having done anything wrong, he was arrested one fine morning. His landlady’s cook, who always brought him his breakfast at eight o’clock, failed to appear on this occasion. That had never happened before.
Franz Kafka was a Jewish Austrian-Czech author writing in Prague at the turn of the 20th century. While working at several dull white-collar jobs, he began writing as a hobby. His novels and short stories explore themes of alienation, absurdity, guilt, and the madness of modern bureaucracy. While we’ll focus on The Trial here, much of what follows also applies to the rest of his bibliography.
The Trial follows Joseph K, a man who is arrested one morning for reasons never made clear to him. His attempts to follow the byzantine rules of the legal system alternatively benefit or harm his case with little rhyme or reason. He is told to attend court sessions without being told when or where and blamed for being late. His relationships with his family, his lovers, and his coworkers are all affected by his case in ways that confuse everyone involved. All the while, the strange world around him rolls on.
Kafka’s works have been favorites of philosophers, particularly since his post-war popularity boom. Simone de Beauvoir references him directly in The Second Sex. His treatment of alienation has been the subject of great debate, particularly among Marxists.
In Marxism, especially Marx’s early works and Marxist Humanism, there is a focus on how capitalism alienates people from human nature and each other. By making work repetitive and outside the creative control of the worker, capitalism is said to estrange workers from human nature. By making labor a commodity, workers compete against one another. The result is bad enough to warrant revolution.
Like Marx, Kafka depicts individuals living in worlds that actively take away their agency and leave them fumbling. The systems they try to navigate have little relation to them, treating them less like a person and more like a line item. The net result is similar; his characters feel separated from themselves and others while continuously losing control over their lives. But while Marx merely explains alienation, reading Kafka makes you feel it.
Fittingly, there is a film version by Orson Wells that may or may not have a copyright. It masterfully combines the themes of the novel with additional subtext concerning repressed sexuality. We could tell you exactly where to find a copy of the book or the film, but to help you understand what it feels like to be a character in a Kafka novel, we won’t.
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I would suggest The Odyssey by Kazantzakis. Or for a shorter time, his The Greek Passion