The Philosophy of Byung-Chul Han Applied to The Systemised Self – Part 16, Masters Series

Abstract

This essay applies Byung-Chul Han’s philosophy of fatigue, transparency, psychopolitics, digital communication, ritual, and infocracy to the contemporary theoretical construct of the Systemised Self. Han’s central diagnosis is that late modern power increasingly operates through freedom, positivity, performance, participation, and self exploitation rather than through visible prohibition alone. This provides a framework for analysing algorithmic system environments in which individuals voluntarily disclose data, optimise themselves, consume personalised content, and participate in systems that predict and shape conduct. The essay argues that Han illuminates how the subject can become both worker and overseer, both user and resource, and both apparent consumer and active producer of the data through which the system governs. His concepts do not prove the existence of the Systemised Self or the Hollow Absolute. Rather, they identify mechanisms through which attention, identity, desire, and social connection may become increasingly system dependent. Empirical evidence is used cautiously: current research documents democratic regression, dissatisfaction, platform influence, and extensive occupational exposure to artificial intelligence, while algorithmic effects on political attitudes remain conditional rather than uniform. The essay proposes the Algorithmic Alienation Index (AAI) as a provisional research instrument and distinguishes algorithmic assistance from systemisation. It concludes that the Systemised Self represents a possible condition in which Han’s psychopolitical subject is technically intensified, while the Hollow Absolute names a society in which transparent, frictionless, and predictive mediation becomes the apparent environment of freedom.

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