“What are the literary types philosophy can are available in? Judging by modern works it appears one of the best ways to precise our concepts is in 8000-word journal articles, monographs, the occasional op-ed. However there are such a lot of literary types to do philosophy in.”
That’s Helen De Cruz (St. Louis College) on Twitter, the place she supplied a protracted record of the varied literary types philosophy has got here in over time. Together with her permission, a model of that record seems under.
The Numerous Literary Types of Philosophy: a Non-Exhaustive Record
by Helen De Cruz
Parables/Tales (instance: Zhuangzi, the story of Hundun)
Poems (instance: Wang Yangming)
Dialogues (instance: Hume, Dialogues Regarding Pure Faith)
Letters (instance: Sophie de Grouchy, Letters on Sympathy)
Autobiography (instance: Beauvoir, A Very Straightforward Demise)
Demonstrations in Geometric Order (instance: OK I can solely consider Spinoza however nonetheless…)
Meditations (instance: Descartes, after all)
Inquiries of varied kinds (instance: Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations)
Manifestos (instance: Vienna Circle Members, 1929, on the scientific conception of the world)
Genealogies (instance: Nietzsche’s Family tree of Morality)
Pensées (instance: Pascal’s Pensées)
Summae (instance: Aquinas’s Summa Theologica)
Prolegomena (instance: Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics)
Revelations (instance: Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love)
Commentaries on older texts (instance: Zhu Xi’s commentaries on the Mengzi)
Confessions (instance: Augustine’s Confessions)
Allegories (instance: Christine de Pisan, The Ebook of the Metropolis of Girls)
Performs (instance: Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit)
Psychoanalysis (instance: Franz Fanon, Wretched of the Earth)
Outlines (instance: Condorcet, Outlines of an Historic View of the Progress of the Human Thoughts)
Tractatus (and comparable lists of succinct statements) (instance: Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus)
Essays (instance: Michel de Montaigne, Of Friendship)
Guidebooks (instance: Maimonides, Information for the Perplexed)
Utopias (instance: Thomas Extra, Utopia)
Orations (instance: Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Oration on the Dignity of Man)
Trial Stories/Histories (instance: Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem)
Philosophical Encyclopedias (instance: Ibn Sina, the Ebook of Therapeutic)
Apologies / Defenses. (instance: Plato, Socrates’ Apology)
Treatises (instance: Locke, Two Treatises of Civil Authorities)
Blogposts (instance: Eric Schliesser’s Digressions & Impressions)
Engravings and different Visible Media (instance: Abraham Bosse’s engraving for Hobbes’ Leviathan)
Discourses (instance: Xunzi, Discourse on Music)
Video-Essays (instance: Ellie Anderson, “Ready: A Philosophical Perspective”)
Philosophical Novels (instance: Iris Murdoch, Below the Internet)
Grammars (instance: Spinoza’s Hebrew Grammar)
Memoirs (instance: Manon Roland’s Personal Memoirs)
Speeches (instance: Sojourner Reality, Ain’t I a Lady? — word that because of the oral type a number of renditions of this speech exist)
Guidelines (instance: Descartes, Guidelines for the Route of the Thoughts)
Reflections (instance: Mary Astell, Some Reflections Upon Marriage)
Disputations (instance: the Disputation of Barcelona, held between Friar Pablo Christiani and Nachmanides (Moshe Ben Nachman))
Pamphlets (instance: Olympe de Gouges, The Declaration of the Rights of Lady)
and naturally: Tweets
Postscripts (instance: Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript)
Additions to the record, and dialogue, welcome.
