The ontology of digital askēsis: reclaiming the sovereignty of consciousness through practices of undoing algorithms in the light of Tolstoy’s philosophy

Abstract

The article presents a philosophical and anthropological investigation into the crisis of meaning in the era of total digitalization, conducted through a hermeneutic analysis of the literary and philosophical legacy of Leo Tolstoy. The methodological foundation is comparative analysis, which allows for the identification of structural analogies between the forms of alienation described by the classic author and the pathologies of contemporary information society. The paper analyzes the crisis of identity under conditions of hyper-informativity, interpreted as a hypersimulation of meaning. The authors argue that the architecture of digital platforms, based on the attention economy and algorithmic regulation, gives rise to a decentered subject. This subject’s identity fragments into a multitude of simulacra, while the subject’s cognitive resources are subjected to exploitation, leading to informational-energetic alienation and a loss of sovereignty of consciousness. The dialectic of alienation is demonstrated: from interpersonal (passion as a metaphysical abyss between the “Self” and the “Other”) to intrapersonal (the drama of a human’s relationship with their own existential vacuum). These texts are considered complementary projections of a single philosophical problem. The study proceeds to analyze the paradox of technological slavery. The paper reveals the dialectic of apparent dominance and real dependence in the relationships between humans and artificial intelligence, where the instrumentalization of the “Other” turns into the self-instrumentalization of the human who voluntarily integrates themselves into the logic of algorithmic efficiency. A transition from historical forms of anthropological alienation to a fundamentally new one – the datafication of Dasein – is stated. This is a process of ontological reduction in which the unique human existence is substituted by a calculable Data-image, and the living stream of experience is fragmented into discrete data-points. As a result, intersubjectivity, understood in the tradition of Max Scheler, is reduced to a transactional exchange of signals, devoid of emotional depth. Tolstoy’s legacy is positioned as a rigorous hermeneutic key for diagnosing modernity. The proposed response to the challenges of the digital age is not technophobia, but Tolstoy’s form of existential asceticism aimed at affirming the irreducible truth of human existence in the face of its increasingly perfect algorithmic simulation.