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Using Fiction in Philosophy Reading Lists

September 11, 2014

By Samir Chopra

In my post yesterday, I had written of how discussion centering on a classic philosophical debate could be sparked by a reading of fiction. (The upper-tier core class I'm teaching, Philosophical Issues in Literature, is of course, all about that!) But fiction features in another reading list of mine–via Walter Kaufman's eclectic anthology, Religion from Tolstoy to Camus–which I am using in this semester's philosophy of religion class. We talked about The Death of Ivan Ilyich yesterday in class and it induced a fascinating, wide-ranging discussion covering religious feeling, existential crises, metaphysical rebellion, philosophy's relationship to death, Tolstoy's critique of organized religion and so on. I have too, in the past, used fiction in my philosophy of feminism class (Ursula Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness). I wrote about that experience over on my personal blog; it was a wholly positive one.

I would be interested in hearing from other folks on their use of fiction in their class reading lists. Where and how did you do so? What was your experience like? Links to sample syllabi would be awesome.

Posted in Samir Chopra, Teaching Philosophy

24 responses to “Using Fiction in Philosophy Reading Lists”

Eric Schwitzgebel

September 11, 2014

Cool, Samir! I’m in the process right now of gathering up about 25 philosophers’ recommendations of science fiction / speculative fictions works that have philosophical interest.
The only fiction I’ve tried in my own teaching is film, in my lower-division class, “Evil”: Schindler’s List and Crimes and Misdemeanors. Both work great, I think, in that context. The point is to get into the psychology of the characters and to discuss the ethics of their decisions. The film portrayal makes the issues vivid and approachable and concrete in a way that abstract discussion is not.
I’ve recently become an enthusiast for speculative fiction as a way of energizing philosophical thought experiments and have even started writing some stories of my own. But I haven’t yet tried that in teaching.

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Patrick S. O’Donnell

September 11, 2014

Samir, I don’t teach a class where this would be possible, but in our course on “world religions” we do discuss the possible reasons one reads and learns from fiction by way of getting students to appreciate why and how religious texts in the form of myths, legends, parables, what have you, in other words, those clearly or not likely “true” (on the order, say, of a descriptive, historical, or scientific ‘fact’), can nevertheless speak to us, be meaningful, teach us something about the human condition, etc. This is especially important for more than a few students disposed to dismiss all this “religious stuff” as childish or irrational nonsense (it’s possible that some if it might be just that, but I try to get them to see that that’s not necessarily the case, to be presumptively open to the possibility that these texts have something of interest if not valuable to say), or for those with fidelity or commitment to a particular religious worldview inclined to view that worldview as possessing a monopoly on the (or absolute) truth.

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Jean

September 11, 2014

I used The Remains of the Day, by Kazuo Ishiguro, in a course on philosophy of literature. Paired it with articles about servility. I thought it was all super interesting, but unfortunately students found the novel boring.
Better experience: using Under the Skin, by Michel Faber, in a course on animal rights. There’s an argument running through the book that’s pretty easy to extract, but the fiction makes the argument much more palpable, so it’s not gratuitous. Students enjoyed both the novel and discussing the argument.

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Clerk

September 11, 2014

I’ve taught Middlemarch and Love’s Work (autobiography, not fiction), both in intro classes. When I was planning a “Philosophy and Literature” course, I was going to teach Antigone, Clouds, and Paradise Lost (along with more typical philosophical texts). I also thought about using Notes from Underground. But I haven’t taught that course (yet).

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Scu

September 11, 2014

I’ve taught Coetzee’s The Lives of Animals many times, but despite it being fiction, it is probably a more straightforward work of philosophy than much of Plato’s dialogues.
I teach a lot of random short Kafka. It is pretty common for me to include some short story of Kafka on the first day of class. Slightly longer pieces for classes that meet two days or one day, such as “An Old Manuscript” or “The Problem of Our Laws,” and even shorter ones for classes that meet three days a week, such as “A Little Fable” or “The New Advocate.” It is mostly a way of trying to get the students talking on the first day, and getting them use to dealing with absurd or counter-intuitive things. Also, I really like Kafka.
Eric, there are so many SFF novels I would like to suggest. But the one I most want to teach right now in a philosophy class is China Mieville’s The City & The City. Though, teaching Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness or her The Dispossessed would be awesome.

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Sara L. Uckelman

September 12, 2014

I have a few excerpts from Tolkien’s “The Notion Club Papers” that I intend to either read to my “Language & Mind” students, or to include in an exam question. He has an interesting argument that language requires embodiment.

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njm

September 12, 2014

Paolo Bacigalupi writes some great short stories dealing with food scarcity and climate change. I have assigned them for a second year environmental ethics paper. He (or, his agent/publicist) was happy to give permission to use one in a course pack.

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Justin Coates

September 12, 2014

I’ve used Vonnegut’s The Sirens of Titan on a number of occasions, and students have pretty universally loved it (“I don’t usually like science fiction type stuff…,” “I don’t have my book with me today because I gave it to my mom to read as soon as I was done,” etc.). It works especially well in a course that deals with the meaning of life or with free will. And in general, supplementing a course–especially one that fulfills a gen ed requirement–with literature (even kinda pulpy literature like early Vonnegut) can be a great way of jump starting philosophically interesting discussions with students who otherwise (seem to) feel somewhat alienated from philosophical texts with which they have no previous experience.
I’ve also used (and enjoyed (but not necessarily reused)) Nicole Krauss’s Man Walks Into a Room which deals with memory and our practical identities; Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange for free will and punishment related issues; Dostoevsky’s short story “White Nights” because of its subtle discussions of love; Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find” and “Good Country People” because of their insight into human motivation. I also show all my intro to ethics students Groundhog Day, usually not too long after we talk about the ring of Gyges (but mainly because it’s awesome).
I’d like to eventually use The Brothers Karamozov and Invisible Man, but right now, I’m just not competent enough to do them justice.

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BW

September 12, 2014

I have had students read Steinbeck’s The Winter of Our Discontent in my business ethics classes. Students typically find Ethan’s behavior very troubling. Interestingly, they cannot easily square this reaction to Ethan with their reactions to more clinical analyses of issues such as the claim that profit is the business of business, targeted marketing, or Carr’s defense of “bluffing”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Winter_of_Our_Discontent
http://www.byui.edu/Documents/instructional_development/Perspective/V2n1PDF/v2n1_george.pdf

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Corey McCall

September 12, 2014

I’ve used literature in a couple courses. In my Bioethics course, I’ve used Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go as well as Simon Mawer’s Mendels’ Dwarf. Mawer’s book more explicitly addresses bioethical questions, while Ishiguro’s book is more of an Existential novel within a bioethics framework.
Another book I’ve used in Environmental Ethics is Rob Nixon’s Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. I plan to use it again, but I hope to use it in conjunction with some of the texts that Nixon analyzes by authors such as Ken Saro-Wiwa, Jamaica Kincaid, and Indra Sinha.

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Ed Kazarian

September 12, 2014

I mostly do this when I teach Existentialism. Dostoyevsky’s Notes from Underground is a pretty classic starting point for that class, and I often use it as an overture.
Additionally, the version I taught the last time I did it focused heavily on race and gender. Following John Drabinski’s suggestion, I used Richard Wright’s novella “The Man Who Lived Underground,” which really does work beautifully with both Sarteran Existentialism and with a DuBoisian and/or a Fanonian analysis of the lived experience of race (they’d read both some early sections of Du Bois’ Souls and some of Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks.
Other fiction I’ve used: Michel Tournier’s novel Friday (which is a reworking of Robinson Crusoe). Deleuze has an essay about it, which is a blast, but you can also use it with a wider range of existentialist / phenomenological material, and also link that whole discussion up to a bunch of socio-political stuff. Students, in my experience, LOVE this book. Years ago, when I did Philosophy and Literature as a summer course a couple of times, this was by far the most popular and well received text.

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r

September 12, 2014

One that was taught to me and that I often see around is LeGuin’s short story “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” in the context of Utilitarianism and its discontents (the story, and it is quite short, is largely just a vivid description of a case in which people must choose whether to accept great life satisfaction for many at the cost of terrible deprivation for one unfortunate soul; those who ‘walk away’ as in the title are the ones who refuse).

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Samir Chopra

September 12, 2014

R: That’s a wonderful story. I used it in the same class a couple of years ago, and students responded well to it.

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Samir Chopra

September 12, 2014

BW: I think some movies–The Wolf of Wall Street–would work well for a class like yours too.

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Samir Chopra

September 12, 2014

Folks, these comments are wonderful and very informative. I look forward to using many of these recommendations in my teaching down the line.

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Eric Schliesser

September 12, 2014

In my early modern courses I often use fiction (Gulliver’s Travels works really well in a course on moral/political) as well Utopian literature (Bacon’s New Atlantis, More’s Utopia, Cavendish Blazing World, etc.).
I have also used novels including Coetzee’s Disgrace and Roth’s The Human Stain in a Social Theory course. Powers’s Galitea 2.2 works very well in a course on science fiction/mind.

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Ben Serber

September 12, 2014

I’m keeping Embassytown in the back of my head for down the road. The illustration of what you get with the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis turned up to eleven is super thought-provoking. Sir Terry Pratchett’s characterization of Death would also be really interesting to use.

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Scu

September 12, 2014

On “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” is specifically referencing James’ “The Moral Philosopher and Moral Life,” too. And I realized I am teaching the James piece this semester, but not that short story. Next time.
Ben: Embassytown is all sorts of great. The City & The City is an amazing novel about sharing the same physical world, but existing in different ontological worlds.

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David Wallace

September 13, 2014

In teaching consciousness, qualia and zombies, I’ve used Greg Egan’s short story “Learning to be me”, and also “The measure of a man”, season 2 episode 9 of Star Trek: the next generation.

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Anon

September 13, 2014

On mortality: Tolstoy’s novella Death of Ivan Ilych.
Aesthetics: Oscar Wilde’s essay The Decay of Lying and chapters of Dorian Grey are lots of fun, since they argue, against Plato, that art is valuable precisely because it’s a lie.
Philosophy of religion: the “Rebellion” chapter of Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov is perfect for the problem of evil.
Ethics: Simone de Beauvoir’s French resistance novel The Blood of Others is a nuanced but positive portrayal of consequentialism, also Sartre’s play “Dirty Hands.” For a critical take, there’s Camus’ play “The Just Assassins” and some really wonderful critical, philosophical chapters about the rationalization of violence in his novel The Plague.
Existentialism:
The Grand Inquisitor chapter in Brothers Karamazov works well with Sartre, as does Henri Barbusse’s Hell and Pirandello’s One None and a Hundred Thousand. Whenever I read the latter, I can’t help suspecting Sartre plagiarized.
I love Kafka, but he can also be intimidating for students. I’ve had success with “In the Penal Colony” and the story within a story “Before the Law,” in The Trial. Both work in interesting ways with Nietzsche’s Genealogy and Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling.
Ionesco’s play Rhinoceros is a great fit with Heidegger on “the They.”
Lermontov’s A Hero of Our Time and Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons, for Nietzsche and discussions of nihilism.

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Charles R

September 13, 2014

Peter Beagle’s The Last Unicorn I use as a foil with Republic, and Le Guin’s Lathe of Heaven as foil with Descartes’ Meditations.
But then when I throw in the Zhuangzi or the fragments of Parmenides, I’m not sure if these count as science fiction, fiction, fables, or articulated philosophical positions. Montaigne’s observations or Nietzsche’s aphorisms or Pascal’s thoughts, same blurred lines. I am not sure why Plato’s plays or Descartes’ telling of a six day thought parade are taken whole cloth as something other than the stories they are, but then I’m slow to get up to speed with the rest of the academic world?

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G

September 13, 2014

If you want something about the philosophy of time, I highly recommend “The Weed of Time” by Norman Spinrad The story tries to represent what it would be really like to experience time the way B-theorists think it is. There are also lots of good time travel stories that are great (I’ve used the old star trek episode ” City on the Edge of Forever” a couple of times)

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Charles Pigden

September 14, 2014

Here’s the synopsis of a ‘Why Be Moral?’ course that I teach. It’s very successful with good WOM and consistently high student evaluations. The students love the literary bits.
Why be Moral?’ is a question that dates back to Plato. Some suppose that morality is socially necessary, a culturally evolved device which counteracts our nasty natures and allows us to ‘get along’. Others believe that morality is pernicious, since it serves as an excuse for cruelty and a prop to predatory elites. I reply that society would be better off believing in a sane and humane morality than none at all. (Though we would be better off believing in no morality rather than – say – the morality of the Nazis.) But even if a sensible and humane morality is socially necessary, why should I, the individual, subscribe to the myth? Or, if morality is not a myth, why should I do the right thing if the wrong thing would pay better? I reply, using examples drawn from literature, that the life of an amoralist would tend to be emotionally empty. Another anti-moral claim is the idea, preached by Hegel, Nietzsche and (perhaps) by Machiavelli, that some people, ‘Napoleons’ or ‘great men’, have the right to transcend the ordinary bounds of right and wrong. We discuss these issues in the light of Plato’s dialogues (Apology, Gorgias, Protagoras and Republic) with side-glances at Karl Marx, Max Stirner, Bertrand Russell and the meta-ethics of Bolshevism. The course concludes with some fictional amoralists and putative ‘great men’ – Dorian Gray from Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, Valmont and Merteuil from Laclos’ Dangerous Liaisons, Raskolnikov from Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, Stavrogin from Dostoevsky’s Demons, Richard III, Falstaff and Prince Hal from Shakespeare’s history plays and Mr William Elliot from Jane Austen’s Persuasion. . In case you are concerned, you don’t have to read all the relevant texts – movies are sometimes an option to bring you up to speed.
I argue contra McGinn that Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, though an entertaining tale can tell us nothing about what it’s like to be an amoral aesthete. There’s much more to be learned from Dostoevsky, Laclos, Shakespeare and Austen.

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Daniel A. Kaufman

October 7, 2014

I have been teaching a course called “Philosophical Ideas in Literature” for 15 years now. It was one of the courses I was hired to teach, here, at Missouri State.
The course has gone through several incarnations.
The first was a combination of speculative science fiction and dystopian literature:
Aldous Huxley, “Brave New World”
Harlan Ellison, ” ‘Repent Harlequin’ said the Ticktockman”
C.S. Lewis, “That Hideous Strength”
David Brin, “Startide Rising”
Arthur C. Clarke, “Childhood’s End”

H.G. Wells, “The Time Machine”

The second scrapped a good part of the more traditional science fiction and ramped up the dystopianism. I kept the last unit the same, however, because it afforded me the ability to talk with students, in very large-scale, sweeping terms, about the distant future of the human species.
Aldous Huxley, “Brave New World”
Franz Kafka, “The Trial”
Harlan Ellison, “The Whimper of Whipped Dogs”
Anthony Burgess, “A Clockwork Orange”
Philip K. Dick, “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”
Arthur C. Clarke, “Childhood’s End”

H.G. Well,s “The Time Machine”

The third version of the course–which I am teaching now–is entirely different. It’s primary focus is the American Dream–but this is partly taken as a proxy for the “middle class dream” in the industrial/post-industrial age.
Nathanael West, “The Day of the Locust”
Joan Didion, “Play it as it Lays”
Hunter S. Thompson, “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas”
Philip K. Dick, “A Scanner Darkly”

Bret Easton Ellis, “Less Than Zero”

The way I have designed and taught these courses really locates them at the nexus between Lit Crit and Philosophy.

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