Thanks for your suggestions. I will use the example of Camus to answer your question at the end of your comment, as I am most familiar with the reasoning behind his decision to write both philosophical essays and fiction to convey his points. The fiction, for him, is like a complex thought experiment to express his ideas more clearly argued in his philosophical works. The Stranger was written at the same time as The Myth of Sisyphus, and I believe that the fictional work in the former aims to make up where his discussion of the allegory of Sisyphus falls short, primarily addressing how a man conscious of the absurd might live a human life, and it adds further nuance to that as well. I am aware that you would probably not buy this example, as you reject the existentialists and nihilists (and I am assuming the absurdists, as well). I cannot speak about the fiction of Machiavelli, Rousseau, and Nietzsche, though I have read some of their philosophical works. I would assume that they wrote fiction for similar reasons to Camus, mainly to flesh out their philosophies in attempted aesthetic portrayals of the human experience.

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What this really boils down to is that I wrote a short essay that should have been a book's length. Also, of course I didn't think that any claim I was making in my essay was new. I wrote a rhetorical essay, not an academic one. I'm obviously not educated enough to write it alongs the lines of academic discourse, so I didn't bother. I am genuinely glad that you responded to it, though, because I posted this essay on this sub with the intention of stimulating further discussion on the topic I skimmed the surface of. I want to learn more. My essay might come off as annoying to many of the people on here, but their frustration with my essay provoked them to come into the comment section and contribute to the discussion. I guess it's a bit polemical, but I still wrote the essay in good faith. From what I've learned so far in my life, I genuinely believe that philosophy and literature often go hand in hand. I am still seeking challenges to that view, and I expect it to develop and change over time. I'll read and think more about the Platonic rejection of literature and look into some of the texts you reference. Thanks!

This is with regards to the very interesting question at the very end: I think philosophy and literature are able to approach a specific topic from different angles and the philosophers you mentioned must have noticed that. (I really enjoyed the passage of OP’s essay where he explained that Maugham enabled him to better access certain topics of Spinoza.) You could also make the argument that philosophy and literature are not as different as mainly philosophers like to think. With the exception of formal logic, philosophy relies on the very unreliable medium of language to relate some sort of truth knowledge. If you read for example Nietzsche or Wittgenstein, you cannot deny that they use literary devices to bring their point across, that their language is downright poetic sometimes.