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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/36463
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/36463
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

I don't think philosophy and fiction are really opposites. The difference is that in fiction, you don't _describe_ the philosophy, you _show_ its consequences.

For example, if your philosophy includes the claim that whatever bad you do, will come back to haunt you, then in a philosophical essay you'd just write that, and give arguments why it should be true. In fiction, on the other hand, you'd write about someone who does something bad, and then it comes back to haunt the protagonist.

Or more generally, if your philosophy says that the greatest goal in life is X, and to reach it, you should do Y, then you could write about a character who first strives for the wrong goal and doesn't get happy. Then after realizing that striving for X is the right thing to do, the protagonist tries to achieve it all the wrong ways and doesn't succeed. Then, finally, the protagonist tries Y, reaches X, and all is good.

If your philosophy include the idea that you cannot escape your fate, you write about a protagonists who try to escape fate and fail, until they finally accept their fate.

If, on the other hand, your philosophy is that you have your fortune in your hands, your proponent will go the other way round, starting as someone who thinks the whole world is against him and he has no chance anyway, until he learns how to take his life in his own hands and succeeds.

Of course there are many more possibilities here, but I think you get the idea.

Indeed, one might even see such fiction as “test bed” for a philosophy: If you cannot write a coherent and convincing story following the philosophy, there might be something wrong with that philosophy. And the story might highlight exactly where the problems with it are.

And in that case you might still get a great story by showing how that particular philosophy fails if you try to apply it to real life.

Original score: 23