The most philosophical novel ever written -- a literary deathmatch

Added: 2026-05-18

[00:00:00]Philosophical novels are important to us, maybe even more important than philosophy itself. Because a philosophy can explain things why something is in abstract terms. But a novel can show us.

[00:00:11]A novel can arrive at our hands at just the right time and leave us dazed at the other end. It can change the course of our lives. They contain multitudes just like we do. They are worth coming back to over a lifetime and worth taking seriously. So, I'm going to pit them against each other in a ranked tournament deathmatch because why not?

[00:00:31]I'm a philosopher with a PhD, publications, and tenure, and I never get to do fun stuff. Plus, I mean, determining the most philosophical novel ever written. How hard can it be? I've made a huge mistake.

[00:00:57]So, why something as stupid as a tournament for something as serious as the most philosophical novel ever written? Well, I did a video recently on when philosophers try to be novelists, and it turns out that some of them are really, really, really bad at it. And that's an interesting video. I encourage you to check it out. But you asked for the reverse. Novels and novelists who do deep philosophy. And I agreed to make that video because I'm an idiot. And unsurprisingly, I've discovered it's impossible. First, because every novel is philosophical. Even Fifty Shades of Gray is philosophical. Novels are about life and life contains experiences, dilemmas, issues, highs and lows. Even the question of how we should navigate life or how these characters should and how they do in the books is deeply philosophical, let alone the societies and the worlds they live in. Plus, the ideas and the ideologies that operate underneath them in every novel. So, yeah, you can see how things came off the rails pretty quickly. And secondly, and color me surprised on this one, but it turns out that while not many philosophers are very good novelists, way, way, way too many novelists are frankly great philosophers. Some of these masterpieces are why I got into philosophy in the first place. So, it's too much. I'm trapped. And then I thought, why not make them fight each other in a tournament bracket where the stakes are immensely serious? So, we have 16 books, which is already a bit of a flawed list with glaring exclusions.

[00:02:29]Please tell me about them in the comments. And as you'll see, there'll be quite a bit of cheating because these are novelists, not moral philosophers.

[00:02:36]They don't have to play by the rules.

[00:02:38]So, I don't have to either. And anyone who says this endeavor is frankly completely arbitrary, meaningless, and almost willfully subjective, saying more about me than the great philosophical novels, well, I'll see you in the comments. Now, here's the field. grouped by my highly sophisticated understanding of the history of literature. And we'll quickly meet them before they're randomly seated against each other to battle it out.

[00:03:04]First, we have the gloomy Gusses. Yes, these are those depressing books your most annoying political friend won't shut up about. A category made up of 19th century Russians and 20th century Brits, all unhappy. First, it's The Brothers Karamazov, written in 1880 by Fodor Dovstoki. No surprises there. And equally less surprising is War and Peace 1869 by the late great Leo Toltoy. Plus the indispensable 1984, You Know It, You Fear It, 1949 by George Orwell. And finally, it's the freaky twin, Brave New World, 1932 by Aldis Huxley. But we can't let the permanently emotionally overcast rule the roost. Next, we have that sweet enemy, the extremely long Europeans. Yes, their mid-century, perpetually mid- paragraph and always in a midlife crisis. But on top of designing fancy chairs and split level houses only rich people can afford, they also wrote books. Long ones, like really, really, really long. Two of them are German, one Austrian, one offensively French. And all of them are willing to contemplate the nature of modern life at length. We have naturally the magic mountain 1924 by Thomas man and its long-standing frennemy the glass speed game 1943 by Herman Hessa. And then we have the chronically unfinished the man without qualities by Robert Musel which why bother giving a date for? I think he's still working on it.

[00:04:29]And yes obviously in search of lost time 1913 to 1927 by Marcel P. It's telling that I had to give half of them decadesl long publication ranges for this bracket because that may be how long it takes you to finish them. But those mammoths will simply haunt your afternoon walks, ladies and gentlemen, while the next group will plague your dreams. It's the postmodern nightmares. Yes, these are the books your artsy colleague wrote a too long undergraduate essay on describing us as desiring machines dissected by the surveillance state of posters capitalism. They're there to be reread, misunderstood, over interterpreted and posted about in your latest Substack entry. We've got the original and still the best metamorphosis and other stories published in at least one edition in 1915 by France Kfka. And we have 2666 postuously coming out in 2004 by Roberto Balano. Then the Viviver sector 1970 by Patrick White. And wrapping it up, an actual plague in the plague 1947 by Albert Kimu. Finally, we've endured the overcast, the overcooked, and the overtly terrifying. It's time for something fun with our sci-fi saviors.

[00:05:39]Four books about the future that you can actually sit down and read on a week and enjoy and have a possible chance of being made into a decent movie, too.

[00:05:47]There were many possibilities here, but we have another singular original, It's Frankenstein, 1918, revised 1931, by Mary Shel, and the wonderfully delirious ubi 1969 by Philip Kadik. Then The Dispossessed, 1974, You Knew She'd Been Here Somewhere by Ursula K. Luin. And last and absolutely not least, The Book of the New Sun by Gene Wolf. Returning to the modernist tradition of publication over 1980 to 1983. That one will maybe take you more than a weekend.

[00:06:18]So those are our groups, which from now on will be completely irrelevant. So why did I bother? And these are our contenders. Now for round one, a simple question. I think most of us can agree that there's profound philosophy in each of these books. None of them is too far out of the cannon and each one has its own enthusiastic champions. Yes, they all contain a good measure of philosophical depth, but the question is which ones truly earn it?

[00:06:50]In our first match, it's the philosophical cannon versus the plucky newcomer. The virtues of the brothers Karamazov are well established. It's a story about an unhappy family. Each member with wildly different personalities. There are love triangles, crises of faith, and one of the most famous chapters in literary philosophy.

[00:07:08]The Grand Inquisitor staging an encounter with a resurrected Jesus and forming a stinging critique of an entire society. Philosophically, it has everything. But it's no fun really. And say what you will about Philip K. Dick's ubi, but it is an absolute blast. a sci-fi paranoid thriller where the main character is spraying the mysterious titular product all over everything just to prevent the world from turning into an acid trip. A tycoon is trying to talk to his dead wife, but her consciousness keeps being invaded by another. I mean, everything is migrating slowly back into the past. Just amazing. It's Philip K.

[00:07:41]Dick at the height of his powers. So, if this were about the most enjoyable read and which was my personal favorite, then there would be no contest. it' be Ubi.

[00:07:50]But by the rules of this extremely serious tournament, the question is not which book I'd rather reread on a long weekend. It's which one earns its philosophy. And the brothers Karamazov earns it by making theology, freedom, guilt, love, murder, and suffering inseparable from the mess of one disastrous family. So the cannon unfortunately crushes in this round which really hurts me because while Dostki may explain the world we live in now, it might be Philip K. Dick who'll end up owning our future. So it's a begrudging congratulations to the brothers Karamazov. And now for something completely different. It's two of the 20th century's masters of fiction facing off in the red corner. The coolest existentialist, the consumate Frenchman, the master of the absurd, Albert Kimu and his 1947 novel about a citywide quarantine. It grapples with what we owe each other, how we keep going, and the importance of doing good when good acts seem pointless. Yet, it shows us the most philosophically profound figure of all, the honorable person living their code and resisting the absurdity of the universe because it is what they must do. And in the blue corner, we have the most overrated modernist novel in history, Thomas Man and his airport page turner, about a bunch of Europeans who holiday in the Alps and complain endlessly about it.

[00:09:12]Yes, The Magic Mountain is very much trying to stage the philosophical illness of Europe before the catastrophe. There's the philosophies of humanism embodied in the poor but gentlemanly Setrini and the totalitarian thinking of Napa. And they spend a lot of time walking about and napping on their hotel balconies and arguing over meals, half of it in untransated French.

[00:09:32]Mondur. But really, I despise this novel. Sorry. It's indulgent. Its philosophical explorations rise to the level of Bertrand Russell. And rereading it, I look forward to all of the characters just dying of consumption, which I just wish they would do it more quickly. This book really makes me agree wholeheartedly with Ron Swanson when he says, >> "All my life I have avoided Europe and its multitudes of terribleness."

[00:09:57]>> And you should too. At least Thomas Man's version of it. Because the philosophical world of the Magic Mountain is already over before the characters even finish bickering.

[00:10:06]Whereas the world of Kimu's the plague and its philosophical implications are still here with us today. Kimu earns the moral urgency of the moment. man just fritters it away. Plus, Kimu does it in a novel about a quarter of the length.

[00:10:21]Yes, it's the plague by an absolute knockout. Next up, The Nature of Genius and its consequences in two novels that seem far apart but actually share secret resonances. First, it's Mary Shel's Frankenstein. You've probably read it.

[00:10:35]You've definitely seen an adaptation of it, and it's a landmark in the history of science fiction. It asks, "What happens when mere men play gods and their creations rampage out of control?"

[00:10:46]It's good old hubris meeting nemesis, plus what status and rights should these new creations have. It's a great book.

[00:10:53]In summary, in summary, but a dull one to read, to be honest. Frankenstein has one of the great philosophical premises in literature, but the problem for me is that the premise has kind of become richer than the novel. its afterlife with the adaptations, the variations, the arguments, the monsters, the laboratories, the bolts in the neck, the whole cultural machine. That afterlow often ends up doing more philosophical work than the book itself does. And it's been wrecked for me by the much better young Frankenstein by Mel Brooks. So, it's the original, but not the best. It comes into this matchup frankly weakened and it's facing Australia's only Nobel Prize winner for literature Patrick White at the peak of his powers in his masterpiece the Viviver sector which you may think is also about an arrogant doctor who gets his comeuppants but no it's a legendary artist who paints what he sees ruthlessly including the secrets the weaknesses and the private tragedies of all of those around him brilliant art justifies his arrogant use of others and oh wait I'm hearing the secret resonances now until he meets a young pianistic prodigy and sees his own artistic trajectory in her. It doesn't end well. So yes, again there's hubris, but there's also humanity questions about the morality of art and consumption. The underlying story of what it is like to be different and constantly on the outside of things, not accepted and regarded as suspect even by the same people who are celebrating you.

[00:12:18]There are philosophical themes in the VE sector from many of the other books in this roundup and it doesn't bang you over the head with them either. It just shows you the price of genius and creation. Ironically, far better than Frankenstein does. The vivctor doesn't tell us creation has a cost. It shows us an artist converting human life into material and paying the price. So call it a homefield advantage for a fellow Australian. But the Viviver sector wins this matchup and we turn from the medical to the mythical. The sweep of history in this matchup because it's Toltoy's legendary unbeatable monumental war and peace. It's the biggest book on your bookshelf. It spawned countless hours long films. It's a ballet. It's basically the national book of Russia at this point. And yes, it has everything in it. The foyables of Nicholas Rostoff, tragic deaths in war, a general nodding off at the fireplace, Pierre realizing the meaning of life by looking at a tree. Moscow on fire for goodness sake.

[00:13:15]It's every undergraduate student's touchstone of a philosophical novel. And so few have finished it, admit it. And honestly, philosophically, it's a little hard to know what to make of it, really.

[00:13:26]It's too big and too diffuse at the same time. Is it Hegelian? Are we all to be crushed by history like ants? Is it intimate and existential? Sometimes its immensity is the whole point for some, but for me it kind of blunts its philosophical impact and it's facing Roberto Balano's tragic, haunting, indescribable 2666.

[00:13:49]The title is a reference to another of his books where a character looks at the unmarked graves of many unknown women in the Mexican border town of Santa Terresa and says it will take us until the year 2666 to even begin to understand the suffering and the indignity that we inflict on each other. It has a second world war chapter. It has academics trying to track down and understand the cryptic writings of a great author. It has an absolutely correct claim that David Lynch's true cinematic masterpiece is Twin Peaks. Like Toltoy, it covers the sweep of history and war and the illusion of peace. But it very much comes with a message. The stoic resistant stance that we must adopt against the violence of the world. Take Kimu, force him to write a modernist historical epic, and you'll probably get something like this. So the real battle between these two is between the romanticism of history and the realism of it. Toltoy was the disillusioned romantic who couldn't help himself.

[00:14:49]Balano is the realist who sees it all and keeps writing to make sense of it for us. Toltoy ultimately calls on us to accept and submit where Balano calls upon us to fight back as much as human dignity will allow. Controversial, I know. The romantic versus the human inhuman, but 2666 it is. So, I mean, this is definitely not fair. The dispossessed by Ursula Kawwin is rightly celebrated, a sci-fi gem that asks profound questions about anarchy versus utopianism. It's a lens on the politics of now by constructing a beautiful, fascinating future world. It has an unusual structure and is one of the few novels that successfully contrasts two completely different but parallel worlds. It's an immediate recommendation from me. It asks the fundamental question of political philosophy, namely, how should we govern ourselves?

[00:15:42]The book, it's a triumph, and it's up against what could conceivably be called the greatest novel ever written. No, I know, Marcel Poo. You're getting ready all of your jokes at my pretentious expense for the comments right now. And good for you. Have at me. I am a ridiculous man whose intellectual pretensions rival those of the Crane Brothers. But don't judge this book by its Montipython sketch. for this year's finals of the all England summarized P competition. This >> contestant this EVENING HAS A MAXIMUM of 15 seconds to summarize Alar to PERU AND ONLY CLOSE TO IT TO HERE YOU CAN SEE EXACTLY HOW FAR HE GETS. SO LET'S CRACK STRAIGHT ON WITH OUR FIRST CONTESTANT TONIGHT. HE'S LAST YEAR'S SEMI- FINALIST FROM LIEUTENANT MR. HARRY BADARD.

[00:16:26]CRAFT'S NOVEL suspensively tells of the irrevocability of time lost THE CORPORATE OF INNOCENCE THROUGH EXPERIENCE THE REINSTALLMENT OF OF EXTRA TEMPORAL VALUES OF TIME REGAINED.

[00:16:36]ULTIMATELY THE NOVEL IS BOTH OPTIMISTIC AND SET WITHIN THE CONTEXT OF A HUMANE RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE RESTATING AS IT DOES THE CONCEPT OF INTEMPORALITY. IN THE FIRST VOLUME SWAN THE FAMILY friend there but unfortunately he chose a general appraisal of the work before getting onto the story >> because besides being one of the most beautifully written books we have it's also one of the most philosophically existentially and personally profound.

[00:17:02]It not only asks what it is to love somebody but what happens when the spell passes and we fall out of love. Seeing a completely different person the next day. It has a moving scene where Puce hears the voice of his grandmother over the recently invented telephone. It's a faint sound and to him it it sounds like a ghost already just before she dies and he's not there to be with her. It asks what friendship is, what drives people, what wounds them. It uncovers a secret emotional world living just underneath the one we see every day. And most poignantly for me, it documents an entire aristocratic and intellectual society that in the final book published after the aftermath of the first world war has simply disappeared. And P is a consumate philosopher because he never offers a complete or straightforward answer. And yet the questions he asks pierce readers to the core. I've read paragraphs from this book and I've thought about them for days afterwards knowing exactly what he meant, the problem that he was framing. And yet like P wondering if there could ever be a complete understanding or an answer to such a profound question. And he asks when these whole worlds, these memories disappear. What are we then? So not a fair fight at all. A valiant effort from the wonderful Leguin. But we have our first true heavyweight. Puce in search of lost time. O. And it's straight into another heated contest. First Herman Hess's The Glass Bee Game. And this, I'll admit, this is the book that made me want to become a philosopher. The book that raised in my mind even just the slightest possibility that one could become a philosopher, could study philosophy, could learn about the nature of the world and people through books and reading and through thought and through long discussions with incredibly smart people. If you love university or reading or any of these things, I think this book speaks to you. It's ostensibly science fiction. set in the 25th century, but really it feels like an Oberto echo novel centered around monasteries andmies and centers of learning in kind of a strange past. It asks what we are doing with all of that learning. And Hessa's answer is not that flattering, but he does interrogate it in the best philosophical language. His characters have different styles of thinking. It has huge ambitions this book. It questions the nature of language and things. All the stuff philosophers love. But it's up against arguably the most important novel in political philosophy ever written, 1984.

[00:19:30]This book, its characters, its big brother, its totalitarian dystopia, they need no introduction. So many have read it and should read it because it's a warning about what our societies can become if we don't respect the dignity of others or respect language or fight for our rights. It has based down the twin phenomena of communism and fascism, condemning both. And today it's coming back with a roaring relevance. Orwell has to be one of the most cited thinkers and philosophers we know and this book is very much the reason why. So it's a close one because my heart and my love of philosophy lie with Hessa. But where Hessa described communities and modes of being Orwell cracked the functioning of our society and the very engines of language itself. Hessa understands the seductions and the limits of the intellectual life. But Orwell understands something even more dangerous. that whoever controls language doesn't merely control what we say, but what reality can become. So, it's got to be 1984. Chalk that one up as another victory for the cannon. Now, I won't even pretend that there's rhyme or reason to this pairing. It was a random seating after all. But hot on the heels of 1984, we have Huxley's precursor, Brave New World. Except here, we have the clash of a highly civilized, highly sterilized society that functions perfectly and that satisfies every desire. and yet seems barren. And we have the noble savage, the utterer of the Shakespeare quote in the title, who encounters it, is shocked by it, yearns for something else, and get stumped in a reservation. It's political critique like 1984, but a lot more said in its ways and fighting a slightly different battle. Some love it, some are left cold. It asks, "Hey, in our rush to modernize, are we losing our souls?" So, it's an old song. Socrates himself used to sing it. And I'm not sure that Brave New World is the most original version either, although we do get plenty of 80s late night classics like Zardors that take the ideas of this book and that run with them to hilarious effect. But it's up against Jean Wolf's Book of the New Son. For my money, possibly the only challenger in terms of beauty of expression and that deep well of emotion some authors tap to P's In Search of Lost Time. This book transcends genre.

[00:21:45]set in the future but playing out more like medieval fantasy. It's like the romances of old, but its ideas and the tiny glimpses of the apocalypses just lurking around the corner for humanity that it gives seem strangely prophetic.

[00:22:00]It wears its philosophy like a shimmering cloak, almost invisible. But every now and then there is just a moment that just cuts me to the core.

[00:22:08]This is a book about the melancholy and the beauty of existence, about how we forget that at every turn and get wrapped up in other things. And it holds up a magical mirror to somehow bring us all back to that. It is a literary and a philosophical masterpiece. And I think it is so deeply unappreciated just because people think it's science fiction by some obscure American author, but they could not be more wrong. It's so much more than that. And it is our winner. For our final match in this round, well, we could have chosen any one of Kfka's postumously published works, but I went with the one that he allowed to be released within his unfortunately short lifetime. It's Metamorphosis and other stories. You know it, you've been creeped out by it.

[00:22:51]It's the story of Gregor Samsa who wakes up one morning transformed into a bug and his family just generally find it inconvenient. They blame him and they question his existence which is really at the core of any Kfka story that we find ourselves thrown against our choice into these absurd configurations and then we must find a way to live or to even simply catch the right train and get to work on time. Kathka's worlds are ones of laws, timets, authorities, duties and yet underneath it all is that constant relentless question of why.

[00:23:25]Why? It's a question we ask ourselves every day. And Kfka is the master.

[00:23:30]There's a reason he's probably one of the most quoted or used novelists by other philosophers like Dereda, Benjamin, Adorno, Delers, Kimu, Arent.

[00:23:38]But he's up against another pranian heavyweight, Robert Musel in his singular work, the man without qualities. Now everything people think Thomas Man should be philosophically, well, that's Robert Moo. watching communism and fascism rise up around him. Watching the world sleepwalking to war, watching societies celebrate while everything burns. That's this book. It has the dazzling smart philosophical conversations at parties that the magic mountain was going for, but it's blessedly much more fun when it does it.

[00:24:07]It has wonderful characters like General Stum vonBver who tries to figure out what all of these glittering intellectuals are talking about and draws up a battle plan of all the philosophers and books and ideas only to find that they're borrowing each other's troops attacking their own positions, splitting up and recombining with the enemy. So, he finds the smartest person he knows, the chief librarian, and asks how they can manage all of this knowledge with the new stuff coming in every day and even keep up with the reading and organize it. and the librarian tells him, "Oh, no, no, no.

[00:24:39]You foolish person. You can't start reading the books. You'll never get anything done. That's madness. You just talk about them and you organize them."

[00:24:46]Horse dumb. Or the rich industrialist and pseudo intellectual Arnum who um reads a lot like certain billionaire philosophy king types we have today.

[00:24:55]Yes, it's a profoundly philosophical and wide-ranging book, but it doesn't feel like the relentless march of history like in War and Peace. And it's not just a debate like in some similar modernist books. It comes alive in all of the best ways a novel does and it lives and breathes. Plus, it has a secret weapon.

[00:25:14]It's easily the funniest book on this list so far. So, sorry Kfka, but Musel's Unfinished Masterpiece earns this final round one matchup. And that's it for round one. Eight matchups down, eight winners advancing. Time for round two.

[00:25:28]and maybe an added level of philosophical difficulty to sort the featured players from the real stars.

[00:25:40]So painful as round one was, we already have two heavyweights facing off again.

[00:25:45]Doseski's the brothers Karamazov versus Kimu's the plague. And this is already impossible. I mean two deeply philosophical books. So, here's what I'm thinking though in settling things a bit more decisively in round two because philosophy is very much about critique.

[00:26:00]It's one of the most useful features of it. It helps us look at the world, what is going on in it. And I think one of the reasons we're seeing so much excellent philosophy from novelists is because they do that too, but with an added level of difficulty. They have to build the world first. They have to make us feel its rhythms and understand it.

[00:26:20]So both the brothers Karam Mazovv and the plague are doing exactly that. These are fully formed real worlds. But what makes these novels deeply philosophical is the way they don't just show but peel back those layers. We see the hope. We see the despair, the beauty, the faith, the absurdity and the contingency that these worlds run on. We see our own world reflected with just a touch of the author's philosophical understanding added to ours. We get some of the mind, some of the insight of Dostoyki and Kimu. But what do they leave us with?

[00:26:53]That's the ruthless standard I'm going to apply in this round as we move to the next level. What do they leave us with?

[00:26:59]Because philosophers offer us a way forward, too. We can't just critique. We must draw out the implications, the ethics, the meanings, or the duties that come from revealing these truths. So, does Dsteski do that? Or does he leave us with a fallen world, a broken faith, and corrupt political systems like the Grand Inquisitor? In the Brothers Karamazov, the only thing that can save us is hope, the glimpse of a withdrawn and quiet god. Is that ultimately philosophical? Is it the truth? Now, you may think so, but I think the reason Kimu wins this one is because he does kind of the same thing in a slim volume that only hints at the depths, but gives us just as much understanding of the absurdity and the contingency of the universe. And there's no God to save us in that one, not even a silent one. And yet, the plague is strangely full of hope. It shows good people doing their duty. It helps us understand why others do not. Philosophers don't necessarily have to give us a way out. In fact, that's often the sign of a charlatan.

[00:28:04]And dski has taken that to heart. There is no way out for him. But in Kimu, we get a way through, a way forward, an inner summer that can warm us in the depths of winter. So, this one goes to Kimu. Now, we get to the wild cards. And while it pains me personally because these are two of my absolute favorite books and one of the authors is the pride of Australian literature, if I'm honest, it's not a close contest. Whites the Viviver sector speaks to all of us, only children at heart, the ones who have Harry Potter syndrome and are convinced that we're special. It's about how we are compelled towards art and expression and the extraordinary cost that it extracts from those who have genius like me. Maybe like, hype, and subscribe to find out. But it's also real about the work, the sacrifice that goes into what looks like the magic trick of genius to everybody else. In short, it's a bit niche. 2666, on the other hand, contains the entire logic of the global society we live in now. The lives that are ungrable and ignored, the gray zones not only of legality, but where we are often forced to live. It speaks to the intellectual and economic projects of the west and their cost in everywhere that is not the west and creepingly in the west too. Us is just so damned cool doing it. Both White and Balano are superb writers. All of our contestants are. But Balano is absolutely riveting. He moves beneath us and gives voice to the homeless, the sex workers, the romantic knights walking amongst some of the toughest places. So sorry Pat, but Bobby's got this one nailed down again in white. It's a brilliant diagnosis, but in Bolano, it's the community that forms in the face of unspeakable tragedy that helps us live again, to find a way through. Now, we turn to the canon versus the cannon. Two of the most highly praised novels of the 20th century, Ps in Search of Lost Time and Orwell's 1984. And I'll come back to that same refrain. Orwell's 1984 is probably the most incisive, relevant diagnosis of our enduring political and social problems that has ever been written. It terrifies. It is endlessly quoted. Even Captain Peard ends up insisting that there are four lights. It shows us exactly what to oppose. By the end, Winston doesn't just lose. The regime tries to make the case that he was never capable of winning. But does it help us through? At the end, Winston rejoins his community in praise of Big Brother. And what are we supposed to do?

[00:30:31]If I can quote another classic TNG line, it kind of shows that resistance is futile and that's no way to live. Now, that's going to look a bit strange stacked up against In Search of Lost Time, but bear with me because the giveaway is in the title. P is cataloging everything he has lost. His childhood, the people he loved, his joy and innocence, a whole society that he once moved amongst, the conversation and the ideas, the goodness of the people he had known. The man ended up famously writing and rewriting this story of loss and absence and longing from a corklined bedroom obsessively barely venturing out. It was the slightest of stories started by tasting a teacake and stubbing his foot on a stone and remembering and it became an epic. But there is also the way through tripping on a stone, remembering, smiling, taking the small moments as songs in a meaningful life. bathing in that lucky warmth of what we have been able to experience. P never actually needs a way out. His narrator is constantly caught up in the world of life and of humanity.

[00:31:39]The key to his philosophy is remembering, of drawing forth the dignity of the other, the time you spend with them, their uniqueness, and how it isn't meant to be captured, as his narrator discovered, but shared and celebrated when it's over. P's gentle human response to life is so unnoticeable that you don't realize you've spent thousands of pages pleasurably learning it. It's the solution to Orwell's diagnosis. The community, the dignity, but also the letting go. It rivals Kimu in its vision of a world that can be capricious and cruel, but also something wonderful. The warm Algerian or Parisian sun. So sorry, George, but it's Poo all the way. Now, I think a fairer matchup would have been Wolf's The Book of the New Son versus P because everything I just said about P is also miraculously present in Wolf's masterpiece, too. Seriously, of all of the books on the list, I still think that The Book of the New Sun is the one that truly hasn't gotten its due.

[00:32:40]Probably because it just gets labeled as science fiction. But it is also produced. There are so many scenes from this book that have stayed with me.

[00:32:48]There's a child dancing on the stone finger of an emperor's statue or meeting a wounded enemy who can only speak in slogans but still comes across as profoundly human. The flowering of the protagonist himself. It's P, but it's beautiful, joyful mournfulness. Not just about a narrator's past, but about whole societies that have flourished and then fallen away. If you have not read this book, I cannot recommend it enough. But it's up against a man without qualities.

[00:33:17]Tonally, a completely different book.

[00:33:19]One that would actually be better matched really with 1984. Although Mus's gargantuan effort shows us how we got here, too. Not just where we are. So, I have to go back to my criteria. So, I have to go back to my criteria. Which one not just diagnoses but shows us a way through? And on that register, it has to be Musel. And the unfinished second volume of his masterpiece is doing the heavy lifting here because it's curiously postmodern. It has alternate chapters. It musel experiments with completely changing the shape of the narrative with what the characters do, how they live, how they respond. His writing technique is an experiment not only in diagnosing the extremes we are living with, but also in the potential modes of being we can adopt to weather them or challenge them or do something else. There's a great moment in a series I love, TV series called Lodge 49.

[00:34:10]Please watch it. It's about a community of people on the verge of having their lives collapse and they're trying to find meaning. And the characters keep running into this cryptic billboard that asks, "Is there a better way to live?"

[00:34:23]And Musul, he carries this question throughout his narrative, and he tries in a dozen different ways to answer it.

[00:34:30]That for me is truly philosophical. Not just taking stoicism or nature, and believe me, there's some fun mockery of nature lovers in this book, too, but many potential paths and trying to figure them out. That is A+ philosophy.

[00:34:44]And that's our winner. Which makes me really sad because saying goodbye to Wolf's writing feels like saying farewell to an old friend. And that's it for round two. I knew it would be tough, but I did not expect it to be devastating, but there we are. Moving on.

[00:35:05]For our first semi-final, the plague versus 2666. Our guys, come on, this is not fair. Both have earned their philosophies. They build a world, offering deep insight into the tides that move beneath it. The essential critique that all philosophy does well, and both very much show us a way through. Not a fun way necessarily or even an easy one, but a way to keep going to fend off history and contingency and simply live as honorable beings in an indecent world. The characters of Kimu and Balano sweat this effort from every poor. That sisophian task of revolt against the absurdity and cruelty of the universe. Both of them lived it too, working as novelists, journalists, poets, documenters of human experience. So they're all equal on those levels. born of tragedy and rising above it. So, let's ask this. Basically, the most important question of this whole video. Which one, if you read it, could change your life? It's an accolade that is reserved for the rarest of books. The ones you can't stop thinking about for years. The ones that you randomly quote or refer to in conversation with friends, the ones where you you meet someone and you just know they're going to get it and you press it into their hands. You even break your ironclad policy of no lending, even if there's a real risk they won't return that book, because you're just so excited at the thought of them reading it and experiencing it, too. And that's Kimu. That's the plague.

[00:36:32]No surprise if you've watched our video on philosophers who were novelists because, spoiler alert, he came out number one in that ranking, too. And he's prevailed here. Look, Milano is great. 2666 gets this far because it doesn't let us turn away. It is still absolutely worth reading. But where Balana's narrative is a call to mourn and to heal, Kimu is a call to arms.

[00:36:55]Books like the plague can and have changed the world. They've certainly transformed the lives of many who've read them. They belong in a special category of their own. So, it's the revoling plague that wins this round.

[00:37:07]And now the matchup I've been dreading this entire time because peek behind the curtain here, but these are my second and third favorite novels of all time.

[00:37:18]It would be like choosing between your children if children weren't so annoying and terrible and unlikely to read any of these books. It's two modernist giants.

[00:37:26]Now, I'll be utterly honest with you here. Musel's intellectual party of a novel is often more fun to read than P's epic. I still think of and laugh at Clarice's suggestion of a year of nature to celebrate the emperor France Joseph's 70th anniversary on the throne and Ulic's horror at the suggestion even the idea of such a thing. This book wrecks philosophies, public intellectuals, frauds, all kinds of justifications. And despite being written nearly a hundred years ago, it's still an absolute banger. It changed my life. I wrote my honors thesis on this book. I got accepted into a PhD program in philosophy because of this book. I thought I would spend the rest of my life writing about the quiet, underappreciated genius of Robert Musel.

[00:38:10]But that's not quite the question, is it? The question is not only what it did to me, it's what it might do for you.

[00:38:18]And here, I think for most of you, the answer is probably no. I think many of you will enjoy it. I think many of you will get tons out of it and even reread it. But the book that will transform you is Marcel P's in search of lost time.

[00:38:32]There are pages in this book that shimmer. There are quotes from this book that I still remember today. It changed my understanding of what it is to love another person. It helped me deal with that soft, mournful heartbreak of thinking about relationships long after they're over and so much more of grief and of loss. So, in the biggest blow to my happiness and sanity as a philosophical reader so far, it's Marcel P's in search of lost time.

[00:39:05]And there's no point delaying. We're almost at the end. Kimu versus P. The plague versus In Search of Lost Time.

[00:39:12]Weirdly, two almost contemporaneous Frenchmen facing off in the final.

[00:39:16]Honestly, I I thought it would be Musel versus P here, but the power of Kimu overcame. And that's the thing. There's no extra criterion that I can deploy to help me here. They're both incisive.

[00:39:27]They both show us a way through, and they're both transformative experiences.

[00:39:32]There's no extra philosophical layer we can rely upon. Now, so far, Kimu's brevity and the oceanlike sparkle of his pros has basically assured his place at the top. The beauty and the humanity of Algeria, of everything appears before us in every word he writes. In Return to Taipasa, he wrote, "In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer. It describes the power of all of Kimu's work." And if you've seen our other video on philosophers novels, you know I cheated there. I said that number one was anything written by Albert Kimu. And I stand by it. But to quote Kimu's friendmy, Jean Paul, there's no exit here. We are limited to the plague, which contains much, but not multitudes and not all of Kimu's most powerful lines. And P, he is cheating here. He has thousands of pages. He wrote a few other short stories and an abandoned novel or two, but he poured his life into In Search of Lost Time. He obsessively rewrote it. He excluded himself from the world just to imagine in his tiny corklined rune everything that had passed and the meaning of that passing. So to counterpoint is my favorite quote from P which is experience which ought to have taught me if ever it taught anybody anything that loving is like an evil spell in a fairy tale against which one is powerless until the enchantment has passed. I have remembered that quote since the day I first read it. It has shaped my life and it is about one of a dozen moments from this deeply profound philosophical book which diagnoses which shows us a way through and which can transform us again and again. It's this book. This is perhaps the most philosophical novel ever written and I encourage you to read it. But it's not the women. No, because ladies and gentlemen, in true Wrestlemania style upset, I hear their theme music. I hear the crowd going wild. I hear them calling out for their favorite for the one, the only, the most philosophical novel ever written, which body slams In Search of Lost Time into the canvas. And I can't believe it. I can't believe this, but the referee is allowing this. But the true winner is your favorite book. The one you love the most. The one that changed you. the book that you not only reread, but every time you reread it, it's not just like catching up with an old friend. It is that, but it's also like catching up with yourself and how much you've changed and how much that book has helped change you. It's that book where reading it again is like seeing your height marked on the doorway of your childhood home. It's what Pruce does for some, too. That sad, sweet smile at remembering, but with the book that has meant the most to you. So that book is the winner which means by the transitive property in the ironclad laws of logic the official winner of this video is every book ever written by Terry Pratchett particularly his Discworld series number one again no contest most philosophical books ever written young innocent Drew will tolerate no disagreement this is my old friend the one I never want to say goodbye to. How about it in the comments? I can take it because yes, The Man Without Qualities was the book that got me into philosophy, but Pratchett's funny, flippant, humane writing set me on that path many years ago. And I'm here walking it still. But that's it for this episode of Philosophical Book Club. And yes, I cheated again. And I'm not even sorry about it this time because I think I'm right. But tell me otherwise. Tell me which book should have won, which one was robbed, and which philosophical novel changed your life. because there are thousands of them out there. And the real point of this ridiculous exercise, I think, was just to spend a little time with these strange, difficult, wonderful books and then hear which ones you think the rest of us should be reading, arguing with, and loving. So until next time, be wise and be kind and spend some time with an old friend.

[00:43:37]A capacitor immune to pain. But when he met Sarter, he nearly froze. Existence perceived essence. Well, I suppose