Philosophical fiction refers to works of
fiction in which a significant proportion of the work is devoted to a discussion of the sort of questions normally addressed in discursive
philosophy. These might include the function and role of society, the
purpose of life, ethics or morals, the role of art in human lives, and the role of experience or reason in the development of knowledge. Philosophical fiction works would include the so-called
novel of ideas, including a significant proportion of
science fiction,
utopian and dystopian fiction, and
Bildungsroman. The
modus operandi seems to be to use a normal story to simply explain difficult and/or dark parts of human life.