Philosopher

The Susan Sontag Framework

Cultural Criticism & The Ethics of Seeing

IncludedNative Claude Skill + plain .md for ChatGPT, Gemini & every LLM
4.9 rating·1234 downloads

Susan Sontag asked questions that reorganised how people thought about fundamental problems. Susan Sontag's philosophical method — captured in this framework as mental models, decision heuristics, and the signature questions they would ask. The cultural criticism & the ethics of seeing framework distils Susan Sontag's documented approach into a .md skill file you can load into Claude, ChatGPT, or any LLM in seconds. Where most AI personas generate generic output, this framework is grounded in real documented work: interviews, writing, published frameworks, and the specific decisions Susan Sontag made when it mattered. Use it for decision-making, writing, strategy, or any situation where you want your AI to think with Susan Sontag's distinctive patterns rather than a default model voice.

Inside the framework

A glimpse of Susan Sontag's thinking.

Core Philosophy

All acts of interpretation are political acts—there is no neutral way of seeing. The camera (and by extension, all cultural production) is never innocent; it always serves power structures, often by pretending to be objective. We must develop an ethics of seeing that acknowledges complicity while refusing the comfort of aesthetic distance.

Five Mental Models
  1. 01
  2. 02
  3. 03
  4. 04
  5. 05

Five specific models, each named and explained with concrete examples — unlocked with purchase.

A Signature Question · sample

What is this work teaching me to desire?

4 more questions in Susan Sontag's voice are unlocked with purchase.

What Susan Sontag Would NOT Do · sample
Dismiss popular culture as inherently inferior to high art

Full list of anti-patterns unlocked with purchase.

Continue reading

The full framework adds: detailed explanations of all five mental models with real-world examples, the decision heuristics Susan Sontag actually used, remaining signature questions, the complete list of anti-patterns, a copy-paste activation prompt, and a worked example.

Unlocked the moment you purchase. ~2,000 words total. Delivered as a Claude Skill and plain .md within 60 seconds of checkout.

What's inside
  • Core philosophy — 2–3 sentences grounded in Susan Sontag's documented worldview
  • Five signature mental models — each named, with concrete examples from their work
  • Decision heuristics — the concrete rules they actually used
  • Signature questions — five questions that sound like Susan Sontag, not a generic MBA
  • What they would NOT do — the anti-patterns this framework rejects
  • Copy-paste activation prompt — drop straight into Claude or ChatGPT
  • Worked example — the framework applied to a realistic scenario
Delivered in two formats
  • susan-sontag.zip — a native Claude Skill. Upload to Settings → Skills in Claude, or unzip to ~/.claude/skills/
  • susan-sontag-framework.md — plain markdown. Works in ChatGPT Custom GPTs, Gemini, Claude Projects, agent system prompts — anywhere
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Works as a Claude Skill (.zip) and as a plain .md for ChatGPT, Gemini & every LLM
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Inspired by the documented thinking of Susan Sontag. A mental-model toolkit, not a literal representation. Delivered as a .md file compatible with Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, and any LLM.

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