Philosophy as literature - literature as philosophy: from existentialism to the postmodern

Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling, Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy and Sartre’s Nausea are great works of literature and seminal philosophical texts. Creators of literature such as Kafka, Beckett and Borges were philosophically engaged. In more recent times Richard Rorty has redefined the relationship between literature and philosophy as about the creation and displacement of strong metaphors. Rorty’s view echoed the work of Adorno and Marcuse and other Frankfurt school thinkers who sought to place the aesthetic on the frontline of critical philosophy.