The Viability of the Philosophical Novel:

The Case of Simone de Beauvoir’s

She 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 novel
allows 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. INTRODUCTION: DOES WRITING A GOOD NOVEL MEAN THAT ONE 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

Hypatia vol. ]], no. ]] (]]]) r by Hypatia, Inc.

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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, by
virtue 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 nothing
more than a thesis novel or roman à thèse.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 abstract
philosophical 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 a
given 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 à thèse, 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 existential
novel, She Came to Stay (1954), for example, the most common way that they
picture 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 no
sense 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 philosophy
allow 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