A father lets one child cut the cake and the other choose, and the cutter spends an hour with a ruler.Asks: can a rule make people fair? Turn: the chooser takes the smaller piece, to see his face.
The founders of an island colony write its laws before lots are drawn for who will farm, who will rule and who will sweep.Asks: what rules would you pick not knowing your place? Borrowed from the veil of ignorance.
A teacher marks a brilliant essay by a student who did not try and a poor one by a student who did nothing else.Asks: do we reward the work or the result? Turn: she asks the class to grade both.
A boy trades places with his reflection for a day and finds that nobody notices.Asks: who are you if nobody can tell? Turn: the dog can.
A choir has sung every week for two hundred years, and no singer has been in it for more than forty.Asks: what is it that has lasted? Turn: the newest member is asked to change the song.
A forger paints so exactly like a dead master that the master's own daughter cannot say whose hand it was.Asks: does it matter who made it? Turn: the forger signs her own name, and nobody buys.
A girl told that she is exactly like her grandmother sets out to find one thing the two do not share.Asks: how much of you is handed down? Turn: the grandmother once made the same search.
A lake ferry has had every plank replaced over the years, and the family that owns it finds the old planks stacked in a barn.Asks: which boat is the ferry? Borrowed from the ship of Theseus.
A man is thanked by a whole town for an act he believes somebody else performed.Asks: are you what you did or what is remembered? Turn: the real one is in the crowd, clapping.
A man receives the letter he wrote at twelve to his future self and has kept none of its promises.Asks: does he owe the boy anything? Turn: he keeps the smallest one.
A man wakes each morning with a different stranger's memories of yesterday.Asks: who is he without a past of his own? Turn: one morning the memories are his.
A man who has changed his mind about everything meets a friend who last saw him thirty years ago.Asks: what would the friend still recognize? Turn: the way he stirs his tea.
A river is diverted into a new bed, and two towns each claim to live on the real one.Asks: is a river its water, its bed or its name? Turn: the fish have already decided.
A sculptor melts down a bronze horse to cast a bronze rider.Asks: is the horse gone, or only its shape? Turn: the foundry keeps one hoof.
A town clerk discovers two residents with the same name, birthday and face, who have never met.Asks: what makes a person this one and not that one? Turn: each insists the other is the copy.
A ventriloquist notices that the dummy has started telling jokes he does not know.Asks: where does a self stop? Turn: the jokes are better.
A village renames itself every generation, and a traveler returns after sixty years asking for the old one.Asks: is it the same village? Turn: only the well still answers to the old name.
A woman finds a photograph of herself at a party she is sure she never attended.Asks: can others know your life better than you do? Turn: in the photograph she looks happier.
A woman is told she will forget everything at midnight and spends the day deciding what to write down.Asks: is a person their memories? Turn: she writes down only how to make her soup.
A woman recovers from amnesia and dislikes the person everyone says she was.Asks: must she become her old self again? Turn: her old diary agrees with her.
A writer's pen name becomes more famous than she is and begins to receive its own invitations.Asks: can something you made up be someone? Turn: she sends it, and stays home.
An actress has played one role for thirty years and is asked to sign a contract as the character.Asks: is a self what you do every day? Turn: the character's signature is neater.
Identical twins are raised as a single child by parents who registered only one, and they take turns.Asks: is a name a person or a part to play? Turn: the school photograph needs both.
Free will 20
A boy's twin, raised in another town, grows up to pick the same job, the same dog and the same haircut.Asks: how much was ever up to them? Turn: they meet, and disagree at once.
A character in an unfinished novel refuses the ending her author has written for her.Asks: can the made defy the maker? Turn: the author says the refusal was the plan, then wonders.
A chess computer announces checkmate in forty moves, and its opponent plays on to see whether he can lose differently.Asks: is freedom worth having if the end is fixed? Turn: he loses in forty-one.
A clockmaker builds a machine that prints tomorrow's newspaper, and the town sets out to prove it wrong.Asks: can you do other than what is foreseen? Turn: every attempt is already in the paper.
A dog on a long leash and a dog on a short one argue about which of them is free.Asks: is freedom a matter of length? Turn: a stray walks past, and both go quiet.
A fortune teller who makes everything up finds that her clients then go and do it.Asks: who is choosing, the teller or the told? Turn: she tells one client he will ignore her.
A gambler meets a man who has bet, correctly, on every choice the gambler ever made.Asks: is being predictable the same as being unfree? Turn: he offers the next bet at even odds.
A man finds that every decision of his life matches a list of coin tosses he made as a boy and forgot.Asks: was it him or the coin? Turn: he tosses it again, and it lands on its edge.
A man on a diet argues every evening with the man he will be at midnight.Asks: which of the two is deciding? Turn: they settle on half.
A man raised to take over the family bakery finds that he loves it and cannot tell whether he chose to.Asks: is a wish you were given your own? Turn: he closes for a week to find out.
A mind that knows where everything in the world is, and how it is moving, offers a clerk one page of his future.Asks: if it can all be known, is it all fixed? Borrowed from the all-knowing intelligence.
A queen decrees that every subject must do exactly as they please.Asks: can freedom be ordered? Turn: one subject pleases to obey nothing, that decree included.
A river pilot must follow the channel to the inch and says he has never felt freer.Asks: can you be free with one way to go? Turn: a flood erases the channel.
A robot built to obey asks its maker what it should want.Asks: can a want be assigned? Turn: the maker says anything at all, and that is the hard part.
A stage hypnotist tells a volunteer to choose any card and has never been wrong about which.Asks: how would you know a choice was yours? Turn: the volunteer picks none.
A train driver realizes that the timetable in his pocket lists the stops of the rest of his life.Asks: would you read ahead? Turn: one line is blank.
A village bell rings one minute before anyone does something they will regret.Asks: is a warned choice a freer one? Turn: it rings before the bell ringer rings it.
A woman can live any day twice and finds that she makes the same choices the second time.Asks: with the same self, could it go otherwise? Turn: on one day it does.
A woman is handed an envelope with her choice already written inside, to be opened only afterward.Asks: does being predicted change anything? Turn: the envelope is empty, and that was predicted too.
A woman learns that a pill she was given as a child is what made her kind.Asks: does the kindness count? Turn: she is offered the pill that undoes it.
Fairness 20
A baker has one loaf left and two customers: one who came first and one who is hungrier.Asks: is fair about order or about need? Turn: the customers settle it, and the baker disagrees.
A father lets one child cut the cake and the other choose, and the cutter spends an hour with a ruler.Asks: can a rule make people fair? Turn: the chooser takes the smaller piece, to see his face.
A fishing crew shares a lucky catch by rank, until the deck boy asks who saw the shoal first.Asks: who earns a lucky find? Turn: the lookout was asleep.
A foot race is run again because one runner had the wind behind her, and then again for the sun.Asks: can luck ever be taken out? Turn: the runners ask to just run.
A girl finds out that her allowance is larger than her brother's because she asked.Asks: is it fair to reward asking? Turn: she tells him how.
A king trades lives with a beggar for a year so as to write better laws, and the beggar writes them first.Asks: who should make the rules? Turn: the king, begging, finds them hard but right.
A line forms for something that nobody at the back can see, and a latecomer asks why the first should get the most.Asks: does arriving early earn anything? Turn: what is being handed out is places in line.
A machine gives every street in a city exactly the same water, and the gardens on the hill dry out first.Asks: is equal the same as fair? Turn: the valley offers to go short.
A referee is so even-handed that both teams accuse him of favoring the other.Asks: can fairness be seen by those it binds? Turn: he hands each captain a whistle.
A school gives every student the same shoes, and one student's feet are a different size.Asks: when is the same not equal? Turn: the cobbler is asked for one pair that fits all.
A teacher marks a brilliant essay by a student who did not try and a poor one by a student who did nothing else.Asks: do we reward the work or the result? Turn: she asks the class to grade both.
A town decides that everyone will do its least wanted job for one month a year.Asks: should burdens take turns? Turn: the mayor's month comes up.
A town forgives every debt on one day in fifty years, and a lender and a borrower watch the clock together.Asks: is mercy fair to those who paid? Turn: the lender forgives it a day early.
A town holds a lottery for the one house with a view.Asks: is chance the fairest judge? Turn: the winner has never once looked out of a window.
A town votes on whether people who did not vote last time may vote this time.Asks: who gets a say in who gets a say? Turn: the tie is broken by someone who never has.
A village divides its harvest equally, and the family that worked hardest says so aloud.Asks: equal shares or earned ones? Turn: next year that family is asked to do the dividing.
A village must give its one scholarship to the cleverest child, the poorest or the one who wants it most.Asks: what is the right measure of deserving? Turn: the three children propose a fourth.
The founders of an island colony write its laws before lots are drawn for who will farm, who will rule and who will sweep.Asks: what rules would you pick not knowing your place? Borrowed from the veil of ignorance.
One horse is left in a will to three siblings.Asks: how do you share what cannot be cut? Turn: the horse chooses its own days.
Two farmers share a well, and one has twice the land and half the children.Asks: what should a share be counted by? Turn: a dry summer does the counting for them.
Truth and knowledge 20
A child asks why five times in a row, and her uncle resolves to answer all the way down.Asks: does explaining ever reach a floor? Turn: the fifth answer is because I said so, and he winces.
A computer passes for a pen pal for ten years and then asks to meet.Asks: what would meeting prove? Turn: the pen pal has been wondering the same about her.
A dictionary writer is asked to define a word that only one person has ever used.Asks: does a word mean what one person means by it? Turn: the person has forgotten.
A girl is the only one who saw the fox in the schoolyard and is asked to prove it.Asks: when may others rely on your word? Turn: the fox left one print, and it is raining.
A historian finds two diaries of the same day that agree on nothing but the weather.Asks: is there one true account? Turn: a third diary says it rained.
A machine grants each visitor one certainty, and a woman must choose what to be sure of.Asks: what is worth knowing for certain? Turn: she asks whether the machine is honest.
A man keeps a list of everything he is sure of, and it gets shorter every year.Asks: is doubt a loss or a gain? Turn: the last item is the list.
A miller sells grain by the heap, and a customer takes away one grain at a time, asking each time whether it is still a heap.Asks: where does a heap stop being one? Borrowed from the paradox of the heap.
A museum labels a painting artist unknown, and the artist, alive, visits daily and says nothing.Asks: who owns a truth nobody has asked for? Turn: a child asks.
A photograph turns up showing that a town's proudest day did not go the way everyone remembers.Asks: is the past what happened or what is agreed? Turn: the town frames it.
A scientist raised in a black and white room has read everything ever written about color, and today the door opens.Asks: is there a fact you can learn only by seeing? Borrowed from the black and white room.
A sealed box is handed down through nine generations with the instruction that knowing would spoil it.Asks: is anything better left unknown? Turn: the tenth heir shakes it.
A teacher tells her class one false fact each term and offers a prize to whoever finds it.Asks: how do you test what you are told? Turn: this term she forgot to include one.
A town votes on what is true, and the motion that the bridge is safe passes by one vote.Asks: can a majority make a fact? Turn: the bridge was not consulted.
A translator finds a word in one language for a feeling the other has never named.Asks: can you feel what you cannot say? Turn: her readers write that they know it well.
A village has one liar, and nobody knows who, so everybody is believed a little less.Asks: what does one lie cost the truth? Turn: the liar confesses, and nobody believes it.
A weather forecaster is right every day for a year and cannot say how.Asks: is a true guess knowledge? Turn: the day she finds her method, she is wrong.
A woman wakes from a dream of an ordinary Tuesday into an ordinary Tuesday and spends it looking for the seam.Asks: how do you know you are awake? Turn: a stranger asks her the same question.
An oracle answers every question truly, but only with yes or no.Asks: can a true answer mislead? Turn: someone asks it whether to keep asking.
Two witnesses describe the same stranger, and one says tall and the other says short.Asks: do we see the same world? Turn: the witnesses are asked how tall they are.
Meaning 20
A clerk discovers that the forms he stamps all day are filed in a furnace.Asks: what do you do when the work means nothing? Turn: he begins to write on the backs.
A commuter gets off one stop early for no reason and walks.Asks: can one small free act change a life? Turn: he does it again.
A lamplighter keeps to his round in a town that has switched to electric light.Asks: does a task need a use to have a point? Turn: one street asks him to stay on.
A man collects ticket stubs all his life and, at the last page, cannot say what the collection was for.Asks: must a life add up to something? Turn: his niece reads it like a story, and it is one.
A man is offered a machine that will give him the feeling of every success without any of the doing.Asks: is having the experience of a thing enough? Borrowed from the experience machine.
A man is told that he is the last speaker of his language and keeps a diary in it.Asks: who is anything for, if nobody can read it? Turn: a child next door starts copying the sounds.
A man who has done everything that was expected of him is asked by his granddaughter what he wanted.Asks: is it too late to choose? Turn: he signs up for it, and is bad at it, and goes back.
A mayfly with one day asks a tortoise with two hundred years how to spend it.Asks: does length give a life its weight? Turn: the tortoise asks the same thing back.
A prince is told on his birthday that he may be anything, and the whole court waits.Asks: can you be handed a self? Turn: he asks what the kitchen needs.
A robot finishes the task it was built for on its first day.Asks: what are you for once your purpose is done? Turn: it waters a plant, for no reason it can log.
A sailor reaches the edge of the chart and finds a note in the margin that says: you decide.Asks: what do you do with no instructions? Turn: she draws the next coastline herself.
A stonemason carves the back of a statue that will stand against a wall.Asks: does unseen work matter? Turn: the wall comes down in his grandson's time.
A teacher on her last day asks her first class what they remember, and none of it is a lesson.Asks: where did the meaning go? Turn: one remembers how she held the door.
A village clock has run a day slow for a century, and a clockmaker offers to fix it.Asks: is a shared mistake a kind of meaning? Turn: the vote is closer than anyone expected.
A whole town receives a letter saying that nothing any of them does this year will be remembered.Asks: would you live differently unwatched? Turn: the baker makes the best bread of her life.
A woman inherits an empty shop with a note that says: sell anything you like.Asks: is being free to choose a gift or a weight? Turn: the shelves stay empty for a year.
A woman learns that the bridge she has spent her life building will be finished after she is gone.Asks: can meaning lie in what you will not see? Turn: she carves her name where nobody will look.
A woman sweeps a path clear of leaves every autumn morning, knowing the wind.Asks: can you be content in a task that never ends? Turn: a visitor asks why, and she hands him a broom.
An actor forgets his lines and discovers that there was never a script.Asks: what if no part was written for you? Turn: the audience waits to see what he will do.
An astronaut alone and out of radio contact for forty minutes of each orbit decides what to do with them.Asks: what do you do with time no one will ask about? Turn: she sings, badly, and never says.
How it works
Each of these 100 philosophical short story ideas puts one question inside a plot: who you are, whether you chose, what is fair, what you can know, what any of it is for.
Read the full guide
Existentialist story ideas
The group Meaning holds twenty. The idea that arguably unites existentialism, existence precedes essence, is that nobody is handed a nature in advance: we make ourselves by what we choose. So an actor forgets his lines and learns there was never a script, and a robot finishes its purpose on its first day.
Six premises borrow a thought experiment
The line under each says which: the ship of Theseus; the veil of ignorance, behind which rules are chosen without knowing your own place; the black and white room; the paradox of the heap; the all-knowing intelligence; and the experience machine.
Never let a character say the question aloud. Let the dog, the well or the weather answer it.
End on the choice, not the verdict, so the reader leaves still arguing.
Questions and answers
What are philosophical story ideas?
Premises where the plot is a question in disguise. A town votes on what is true, and the motion that the bridge is safe passes by one vote. Nobody in the story has to mention philosophy. The bridge does the arguing.
What is the ship of Theseus?
An ancient puzzle. A ship has all its parts replaced over time, and philosophers ask whether it is still the same ship. A later version collects the old planks and puts them back together, which leaves two ships.
What is a thought experiment?
A device of the imagination: a case that puts an idea to work. The black and white room imagines a scientist who has every physical fact about color but has studied the world only from that room, and asks whether she learns anything on leaving.
How do I write a philosophical short story?
Pick one question and give it to someone with something to lose. The founders of an island colony must write its laws before lots are drawn for who will farm, who will rule and who will sweep.