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Cozy Quiet Storytime Uncovers Existential Mysteries

Philosophy has the reputation of verbosity. As someone who wrote a punchy, succinct 486 page manifesto, I have no idea what everyone is complaining about. That said, I do admire short story writers who can fit so much depth into so little space. I’ve collected the best of the best for you.


Gather around for storytime, prepare to uncover the universe’s greatest mysteries, and maybe even take a step closer to finding answers.



Isaac Asimov - The Last Question


Who is it for: A person who wonders what happened billions of years before their birth, and what will happen billions of years after their death.

Philosophical themes: Present-day physics and thermodynamic laws are open to the interpretation that energy is inexorably degraded into entropy, and that we are therefore on a one-way trip to what is poetically called the heat death of the universe. But it’s also plausible that the cosmos is ekpyrotic—in which every ending leads back to a beginning. Following this train of thought, Asimov conceives of the question that will be asked at the end of our universe.

The mystery: Can entropy be reversed?

Opening line: “The last question was asked for the first time, half in jest, on May 21, 2061, at a time when humanity first stepped into the light.”

Jorge Luis Borges - The Library of Babel


Who is it for: Someone who is thinking about living in an age that is so abundant in information, but increasingly struggles to distinguish signal from noise.

Philosophical themes: Is the library infinite? Is there a book-of-books that is the perfect culmination of all possible knowledge? Does knowledge, stretched to these absolute limits, collapse in on itself to become incomprehensible? I see this as the epistemic counterpart to Asimov’s cosmogonic short story.

The mystery: Can we ever discover an Adamic language or characteristica universalis?

Opening line: “The universe (which others call the Library) is composed of an indefinite, perhaps infinite number of hexagonal galleries.”

Arthur C. Clarke - The Nine Billion Names of God


Who is it for: Someone who honors the present moment through honest reflection on their purpose—asking, what should I be doing?

Philosophical themes: Where The Last Question is more ontologically-oriented, and Borges’s story deals more with epistemology, this third stop in our storytime rounds things out with an ethical reflection. It is built upon the same general themes of what are sometimes called the eternal philosophical questions. These include: How did the universe come to be? Will the universe end, and perhaps be reborn? And, as in the present story, what is the meaning of it all?

The mystery: Is there a coherent, non-arbitrary, non-relative purpose of reality?

Opening line: “‘This is a slightly unusual request,’ said Dr. Wagner, with what he hoped was commendable restraint.”

Ursula K. Le Guin - The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas


Who is it for: Thought-leaders and world-builders who ponder the hidden (or not so hidden) costs of progress.

Philosophical themes: Comparable to Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery, this story is equally poignant in its simple but timeless message. The philosophical key to both is a sort of Girardian scapegoating—wherein the principal means of creating progress and resolving crises is the sacrifice of a single symbolic victim. Omelas, an apparent utopia, holds a dark secret. The story questions utilitarianism and consequentialist ethics, and could be seen as a literary parallel to Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem.

The mystery: Are attempts at perfection always undercut by a fatal flaw?

Opening line: “With a clamor of bells that set the swallows soaring, the Festival of Summer came to the city Omelas, bright-towered by the sea.”

Plato - The Myth of Theuth


Who is it for: Those who are thinking about the present and future of technology, humanity, and the ways in which both of these mutually affect each other.

Philosophical themes: Within Plato’s book-length dialogues, we are often treated to semi-self-contained short stories. The most famous of these is probably The Cave Allegory. But The Myth of Theuth has some particularly timely relevance for us today as well. It deals with the intersection of language, memory, learning, and technology. Could anything other than artificial intelligence come to mind just now? Is technology a pharmakon—both poison and cure?

The mystery: When does technology augment our cognitive abilities, and when does it degrade them?

Opening line: “Enough appears to have been said by us of a true and false art of speaking.”

George Egerton - The Mandrake Venus


Who is it for: People who have heard that “God is dead”, but are still wondering what’s next.

Philosophical themes: This story is dripping in Nietzschean philosophy. Over 120 years have passed since its publication. And there is no doubt that, living in the budding years of metamodernism, we are undergoing radical changes in our worldviews that were predicted in works like this one. These kind of metaphysical restructurings of society are highly volatile and uncertain. Writers like Nietzsche and Egerton warned us a long time ago—and the need to act has never been more urgent.

The mystery: How can we overcome the “meaning crisis” of our era?

Opening line: “A pilgrim, born of investigation by truth, was traveling along the highway of the world.”

Edgar Allen Poe - The Oval Portrait


Who is it for: Creative-types who are driven by a desire to foster connection, empathy, and love.

Philosophical themes: Art may be the exultation of life—the wise, the beautiful, and the good. But, taken to its extreme, as with this short story, it may also be perfectly dehumanizing. Art, as a perspective of the real, has the power to bring us into closer and more psychologically intimate communion with people, nature, and universal interconnection. Yet, the perspective can “take over”, obscuring all of the above and objectifying its subject. This duality is always present when Eros is involved.

The mystery: If art can either connect us or distance us, what is the secret to wielding it wisely?

Opening line: “The chateau into which my valet had ventured to make forcible entrance, rather than permit me, in my desperately wounded condition, to pass a night in the open air, was one of those piles of commingled gloom and grandeur which have so long frowned among the Appennines, not less in fact than in the fancy of Mrs. Radcliffe.”

Jean Stafford - Children Are Bored on Sunday


Who is it for: Someone trapped between two worlds, because they feel like an imposter in both.

Philosophical themes: Before the internet became the undisputed champion of isolating us by connecting us, there was the city. The protagonist, Emma, is (in her own account) too much of an intellectual to fit in with the rubes, and too much of a rube to fit in with the intellectuals. Most of the story revolves around her inner monologue, which tells her (and us) that she does not belong anywhere. There is a fascinating struggle here between externally and internally imposed loneliness.

The mystery: If the intellectual refuge in one’s mind becomes an intellectual prison, how do you escape?

Opening line: “Through the wide doorway between two of the painting galleries, Emma saw Alfred Eisenburg standing before ‘The Three Miracles of Zenobius,’ his lean, equine face ashen and sorrowing, his gaunt frame looking undernourished, and dressed in a way that showed he was poorer this year than he had been last.”

Jean Rhys - The Day They Burned the Books


Who is it for: Someone who wonders what is means to inherit a cultural history that contains both great wisdom and great violence.

Philosophical themes: This short story, semi-autobiographical in nature, paints a picture of domestic conflict that mirrors broad patterns of intercultural relationships. The central, eponymous act of the story—the burning of books—prompts philosophical reflection on the contextual frame of certain actions. The history of banning, censoring, or burning books is long and infamous. But Rhys flips this around and turns it into righteous rebellion.

The mystery: Should we accept or reject a cultural inheritance if it is soaked in blood?

Opening line: “My friend Eddie was a small, thin boy.”

Kate Chopin - The Story of An Hour


Who is it for: Someone who had a transformative experience that permanently changed them.

Philosophical themes: In a famous philosophical thought experiment, we are asked to consider the “Ship of Theseus”, the mythical sea-craft that is replaced one plank at a time, until every plank has been replaced. The question is whether it retains its identity—whether it remains the same ship. And, naturally, the same applies to people. If transformative experiences, like the one in this short story, are akin to death-and-rebirth, what does it mean for the continuity of personhood when the boards of our ships are forever being replaced?

The mystery: If we are constantly letting parts of ourselves die, and other parts be reborn, who do we become after each life-cycle of the psyche?

Opening line: “Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband’s death.”

I just realized that storytime is meant to be soothing. And now I’m going to be wide awake all night thinking about these mysteries. Maybe this is why people don’t like philosophers.

 
 
 

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