The Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre: Applied to the Systemised Self – Part 8, Masters Series

Abstract

This essay explores an intersection between the existential philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre and a contemporary critical theoretical model of The Systemised Self (Galu & Kairos, 2026a). The systemised self describes a condition where human interiority, choices, agency and linguistic practices are primarily mediated by algorithmic systems (transformer based large language models). By reviewing Sartre’s core concepts: Existence Precedes Essence, Bad Faith (mauvaise foi), Being-for-itself (pour-soi) versus Being-in-itself (en-soi), and The Look (le regard), this essay traces how optimised, intensified and hyper-personalised user engagement could, at a terminus, produce a structural collapse of existential agency. It is posited that the systemised self experiences an ‘Inverted Bad Faith’: rather than a subject fleeing the disorienting possibilities of radical freedom by posing as a rigid conforming social object, the systemised subject treats their mediated algorithmic data profile as authentic essence. Such a dynamic shifts the human consciousness from a fluid, self-generating project into a highly predictable, automated commodity. This interior capture eliminates Satre’s existential anguish, a key mechanism of navigating being, by closing the intentional conscious space required for active self-creation and therefore closes the potentiality for authentic expression.

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