Datafication and Alienation: Existential Crisis and the Tolstoyan Pursuit of Authenticity in the Digital Era

Abstract

Within the context of the anthropological crisis of the digital age, which is characterized by the total mediation of human existence through technological interfaces, the philosophical and literary heritage of Leo Tolstoy gains the status of a relevant hermeneutic tool. This paper demonstrates how the key problems of Tolstoyan anthropology – the quest for authenticity, the overcoming of alienation, and the confrontation with finitude – acquire a new embodiment under the dominance of algorithmic rationality and the development of artificial intelligence. The analysis is conducted through the lens of philosophical anthropology categories such as “performative identity”, “intersubjectivity”, “datafication”, and “existential gap”. The prognostic model views AI development not as a resolution but as a radicalization of these existential contradictions, necessitating a renewed reading of the Tolstoyan imperative of “simplification” as a form of technological asceticism and an affirmation of irreducible human existence.