Fiction enabled him to explore philosophical concepts through concrete formal experimentations in ways that philosophical writing would have left at another level of abstraction.

He taught himself to read and write and was a student of philosophical writings and confucian thought.

In actual acquaintance with the philosophical writings of the ancients, he has probably never been surpassed.

It was the only example of his philosophical writings published in his lifetime.

His philosophical writings deal mainly with the relationship between reason and faith.