This is with regards to the very interesting question at the very end: I think philosophy and literature are able to approach a specific topic from different angles and the philosophers you mentioned must have noticed that. (I really enjoyed the passage of OP’s essay where he explained that Maugham enabled him to better access certain topics of Spinoza.) You could also make the argument that philosophy and literature are not as different as mainly philosophers like to think. With the exception of formal logic, philosophy relies on the very unreliable medium of language to relate some sort of truth knowledge. If you read for example Nietzsche or Wittgenstein, you cannot deny that they use literary devices to bring their point across, that their language is downright poetic sometimes.
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Reply to comment by BillBigsB in On Reading Literature as Philosophy by lucaruns
This is with regards to the very interesting question at the very end: I think philosophy and literature are able to approach a specific topic from different angles and the philosophers you mentioned must have noticed that. (I really enjoyed the passage of OP’s essay where he explained that Maugham enabled him to better access certain topics of Spinoza.) You could also make the argument that philosophy and literature are not as different as mainly philosophers like to think. With the exception of formal logic, philosophy relies on the very unreliable medium of language to relate some sort of truth knowledge. If you read for example Nietzsche or Wittgenstein, you cannot deny that they use literary devices to bring their point across, that their language is downright poetic sometimes.