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The Viability of the Philosophical Novel:

The Case of Simone de Beauvoir’sShe Came to Stay

ASHLEY KING SCHEU

This article begins by asking if the project to write a philosophical novel is not inherently flawed; it would seem that the novelist must either write an ambiguous text, which would 

not create a strong enough argument to count as philosophy, or she must write a text with

a clear argument, which would not be ambiguous enough to count as good fiction. The

only other option available would be to exemplify a preexisting abstract philosophical sys-

tem in the concrete literary world. To move beyond such an impasse, this article turns to

the work of Simone de Beauvoir. Beauvoir’s unique aesthetic theory in ‘‘Literature and Metaphysics’’ envisions philosophy as an integral part of the literary text and sees the

novel not as an argument but as something called a ‘‘philosophical appeal’’ (Beauvoir 

2004b). In her first novel, She Came to Stay, such a concept of the philosophical novelallows Beauvoir to make an original contribution to the philosophical tradition—one in

which Beauvoir rethinks the problem of solipsism—while still creating a stunning literary

work (Beauvoir 1954). A study of the theory and the novel together thus provides a solid 

understanding of what philosophers stand to gain from the philosophical novel.

I. I NTRODUCTION: DOES WRITING A GOOD NOVEL MEAN THAT O NE MUST

ABANDON PHILOSOPHY?

In her ‘‘Philosophy and the Literary Medium: The Existentialist Predicament,’’

Amy M. Kleppner considers the viability of the French existentialist project to

write philosophical novels. She asks:

[I]s it possible to satisfy the requirements for a successful work of 

imaginative literature and an acceptable philosophical system at

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the same time, in the same piece of writing? Or are these in-

compatible demands that doom such attempts to failure, byvirtue of inherent differences between the literary and the

philosophical enterprise? (Kleppner 1964, 214)

Kleppner suggests that an inherent tension exists between the philosophical

and the literary project, and at the end of her article Kleppner concludes that

this tension is not fully resolvable. If an author would like her novel to be phi-losophy, Kleppner reasons, she must put forth a strong, clear, and original

argument. This argument, in turn, weakens the novel’s artistic value, for liter-

ary critics tend to value ambiguity in a fictional work, and they label fiction

with too strong a philosophical, ethical, or moral message as being nothingmore than a thesis novel or  roman a ` these.1 On the other hand, if the author 

would like her novel to have artistic value, she must abandon the possibility of 

a new philosophical argument and instead exemplify a position supported else-

where, in a traditional philosophical format.As Kleppner’s argument is forceful and well constructed, it should at the

least trouble any scholar hoping to study the contributions that philosophical

literature can make to the overall field of philosophy. Within the context of her argument, that contribution is clearly limited, for the only way that philo-

sophical literature can engage the tradition is to make preexisting abstractphilosophical concepts clearer by providing concrete examples. Philosophical

literature, then, would seem to be a supplement to philosophy, something that

a philosopher would study in order to clarify what she already knows about agiven philosophical system. If the philosophical novelist tries to do more—if 

she tries, for example, to posit new philosophical theories or offer new ideas to

the tradition—she would inevitably fall into Kleppner’s contradiction, for she

would have to write a roman a ` these, and her work would be a literary failure.

Such notions about how a novel can count as philosophy do not seem to be

limited to Kleppner. When critics discuss Simone de Beauvoir’s first existentialnovel, She Came to Stay (1954), for example, the most common way that theypicture the role of philosophy within the novel is to say that Beauvoir first ab-

sorbs existing philosophical systems, then creates a concrete example of those

systems within her fictional narrative, and finally demonstrates either that

the system holds in the real world or that its metaphysical abstractions make nosense in the life of one of her characters. In other words, critics often imagine

fiction as a concrete example or as a test in the concrete of established philo-

sophical doctrines. In both cases, a behind-the-scenes philosophy motivates

the text and dictates its content and structure.2

While such pictures of the relationship between literature and philosophyallow for rich analyses of Beauvoir’s philosophical novels in relation to the field

of philosophy, they also imply that to count as philosophy, a novel must lean

2 Hypatia