Prompt 26: Two Philosophers Discuss Your Life

How would Sartre and de Beauvoir make sense of your life, over drinks and cigarettes, in a French cafe?

Purpose of this prompt: I love Paris and sometimes, when I’m there, I’ll sit for a while at Les Deux Magots, and imagine the ghosts of philosophers past. How might they make sense of my own life, or of yours? This prompt allows you to be a fly on the wall, as they talk about you.

An ask to you, fellow Prompt Experimenters: If you enjoy this prompt, please consider liking it, sharing it with someone else who may enjoy it, or adding your perspective in a comment to this post.

NOTE: This prompt has been updated and re-mastered on March 16, 2025

Prompt and Instructions

1. Cut and paste this entire Deep Research report into a .txt or Word document, and upload to ChatGPT: https://chatgpt.com/share/67d6e25b-31dc-8004-b80e-464efe9b8f4c

2. Upload file and cut and paste the italicized prompt below into ChatGPT:

Can you please create an experience for me to stimulate philosophical reflection, but in a connected human way? To do this, please following these steps: 1) ask me to tell you my name and a bit about myself, whatever I would like to tell you. 2) Tell me to assume that I am close friends with two famous mid-20th century French philosophers, and ask me what they would likely think of me, how they would describe me, what they would like about me, what they might dislike about me, etc. 3) Ask me to briefly describe "something that I am going through in my life" which may be positive, negative, stressful, or otherwise a significant presence in my mind. Give me the alternative to NOT answer this question and allow them to choose what issue they see me going through in my life right now 4) write an extended scene in which Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir discuss me, and "what I'm going through." This should be philosophically profound, but also entertaining (reflecting the mannerisms of the philosophers) and real (representing the fact that these are authentic friends of mine who care about me). You should read the attached guide to Sartre and de Beauvoir in detail, and profoundly incorporate it into your work, creating a scene the would satisfy a Sartre/de Beauvoir expert as well as appealing to a general reader. It should be personal as well, so even though they are engaging in philosophical discussion, they should convey their personal and emotional and human feelings toward me as an individual. Finally, it should be witty and sharp. Imagine a script that follows all of the above instructions, but then is re-written by Aaron Sorkin to be crisp, authentic, and maximally entertaining. Note: please do not ask me more than one question in each message, and do not try to describe the entirety of this exercise all at once. Just lead me through it, organically, step by step. Note: In addition to the specific issue that I specify, you can draw on everything you know about me, give that knowledge to Sartre and de Beauvoir, and allow them to freely draw upon it.

Example Output:

(A smoky Parisian cafe, 1946. The air hums with the sound of intellectuals arguing over Gauloises and bitter espresso. Sartre and Beauvoir sit at their usual table, an untouched copy of Les Temps Modernes between them. Beauvoir stubs out a cigarette; Sartre, ever fidgeting, taps his pipe against an ashtray. The topic of discussion? Their friend, Techintrospect.)

Sartre: He is, I think, at war with his own freedom. It is charming, in a way. He understands that he is condemned to be free, and yet—look how he constructs for himself elaborate frameworks, these games of self-improvement. It is not enough to be free; he must measure his freedom, quantify it, refine it into a system. This is very American of him, no?

Beauvoir: You mean pragmatic.

Sartre: I mean mechanical. He believes in freedom, but he is uneasy with its weight. And so, he plays with it. If he can turn self-overcoming into a game, then perhaps he can avoid the nausea of realizing that it is all, ultimately, without structure.

Beauvoir: I don’t think it is avoidance. He knows there is no cosmic judge tallying up his points. He is constructing meaning, not dodging meaninglessness. I rather admire that he turns his philosophy into action—it’s more than can be said for most intellectuals, including some who sip coffee in this very establishment.

Sartre: (grinning) A direct attack, Castor?

Beauvoir: A fact. You say he is uncomfortable with freedom, but you often forget how difficult it is to act with integrity in a world without given purpose. Not everyone can be content to simply proclaim freedom and leave it at that. He does something with it.

Sartre: (leaning forward) Ah, but does he? Or does he merely create another structure to reassure himself? You call it action, but I wonder if he does not risk bad faith—turning freedom into an instrument rather than a condition. To gamify self-improvement, to treat one’s development as a series of measurable objectives—is this not just another mask, another role to play, as inauthentic as the waiter in my example?

Beauvoir: The waiter is in bad faith because he reduces himself to a function. Techintrospect does the opposite: he expands, he explores. He does not pretend to be a thing—he asks what he can become. And, unlike you, he does not isolate freedom from the social and material world. He uses AI. He sees it as a tool—not to replace thought, but to sharpen it. You can sneer at optimization if you like, but he is engaged in something real.

Sartre: Yes, yes. But why? If he plays the game long enough, does he not risk becoming its prisoner? If life is a game, who decides the rules?

Beauvoir: He does. And that is what you refuse to see—his engagement with AI is not a retreat from responsibility, it is an exercise of it. Perhaps this is what interests me most about him: his willingness to experiment, to create systems not as prisons, but as scaffolding for new possibilities. He plays, yes, but not frivolously. His games are serious, his experiments are lived. And if he fails? He adapts. Not with despair, but with curiosity.

Sartre: (pausing) So you think he is authentic?

Beauvoir: I think he is trying to be. And that is enough. You know, Jean-Paul, not all of us can spend our time merely tearing down illusions. Some of us have to build.