I am a philosopher interested in the greatest intellectual works with the aim of bringing the mysteries of these works into a personal engagement for the life of the mind.
This passion that I wish to communicate to you is the fruit of a long journey.
I was originally motivated to investigate science (evolutionary anthropology and biology). This helped me cultivate a deep knowledge of the world, but this understanding lacked the capacity to approach the most challenging aspects of life: sex, money, power, violence, heartbreak, family, community.
This is when the Philosophies of phenomenology and psychoanalysis opened me to new perspectives. Not only did they change my relationship to knowledge, but also my relationship to anxiety, self-definition, love, death, and creative drive.
I absorbed the greatest philosophers of the modern world, however, understanding their deep-thinking was a difficult task. During that process, I would have loved recourse to elder guides with philosophical knowledge, and honest spaces that opened up exploration for the more difficult aspects of self reflection. But even in intellectual spaces at university, the teachings were often too dry and disconnected from daily practical reality and personal truth.
After completing my Doctorate in philosophy I decided to create my own online space dedicated to my own perspective on philosophy. I planted the seed that has become Philosophy Portal. What really motivated me was to turn philosophical readings into something serving practical reality and personal truth.
Today, Philosophy Portal shares with others how philosophy from the greatest thinkers can inspire deep insights about our self-journey. The community here has become a unique space, intellectually, creatively, and interpersonally, open to life-long learning, creativity, and friendship.
My logic for creating the course material reflects my own intellectual quest: I only teach the thinkers who triggered in me an inner thirst for developing reflections, discourses, and studies that could be important cultural foundations for the future of our society.
This quest is always connected to my personal truth so I can share my interpretation with a passion to spark that quest in the other. I believe that as our world becomes more complex existentially, there will be a necessity for everyone to cultivate a new logic derived from a deeper philosophical perspective on life.
Contact.
My Books
Doctoral Thesis, Global Brain Singularity
I completed my PhD April 8 2019 with a work titled Global Brain Singularity. This thesis is structured in 4 parts which can be broadly conceptualized as the Past, Present, Future and Meta-Present. The basic idea behind the thesis seeks to combine evolutionary theory and speculative philosophy to rethink the meaning of the technological singularity for 21st century humanity.
Post-doctoral work, Systems & Subjects
I worked on a post-doctorate at the Bertalanffy Centre for the Study of Systems Science (BCSSS), titled Systems & Subjects. This book is (also) structured in 4 parts which can be broadly conceptualized as relating to the background of four different thinkers in the continental tradition: Heidegger, Freud, Nietzsche, and Hegel. The basic idea behind the work is to put systems science and continental philosophy into a dialectical relation in order to think both the systemic nature of civilisation and its subjective inhabitants/creators.
Philosophy Portal Anthologies
Enter the Alien: Thinking as 21st Century Hegel
The first official Philosophy Portal course focused on Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. The subsequent post-course work resulted in an anthology inspired by this course process. Enter the Alien features contributions from 12 thinkers on topics ranging from eastern spirituality, sexuality and metaphysics to high mathematics, everyday life and contemporary atheism.
Abyssal Arrows: Spiritual Leadership Inspired by Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Abyssal Arrows establishes a tradition at Philosophy Portal, a tradition of long-term conceptual-communal mediation. The second anthology, inspired by Thus Spoke Zarathustra, features 28 voices attempting to give birth to the project that Nietzsche started, that of the Spirit Child. Such a labour has a clear direction but also an abyssal dimension, which is perhaps even more relevant for our time, then when Nietzsche was writing.
CONVERSATIONAL BOOK: SEX, MASCULINITY, GOD
Discourses for the future of sexuality, masculinity, and spirituality
Images by Alicia Herbert
All Publications, from 2013 to the Present
Last, C. 2023. Afterthought: Reflection on Lightning Strikes. In: Abyssal Arrows: Spiritual Leadership Inspired by Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Philosophy Portal Books, Independent Published. p. 743-756. (link)
Last, C. 2023. Philosophy After Nietzsche: The Challenge of Thinking both Becoming under a Cross and an Other Becoming towards Flight? In: Abyssal Arrows: Spiritual Leadership Inspired by Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Philosophy Portal Books, Independent Published. p. 727-742. (link)
Last, C. 2023. Music’s Crown. In: Abyssal Arrows: Spiritual Leadership Inspired by Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Philosophy Portal Books, Independent Published. p. 707-712. (link)
Last, C., Rose, O.G. 2023. Zarathustra, Marriage and Children: Conversation about and with a liminal web family. In: Abyssal Arrows: Spiritual Leadership Inspired by Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Philosophy Portal Books, Independent Published. p. 617-681. (link)
Last, C. 2023. Nietzsche’s Zarathustra as a Model for Hegel’s Essence. In: Abyssal Arrows: Spiritual Leadership Inspired by Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Philosophy Portal Books, Independent Published. p. 377-396. (link)
Last, C., Orosz, K., Dick, D. 2023. Emerging Knowing. In: Abyssal Arrows: Spiritual Leadership Inspired by Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Philosophy Portal Books, Independent Published. p. 357-375. (link)
Last, C. 2023. Jump Man. In: Abyssal Arrows: Spiritual Leadership Inspired by Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Philosophy Portal Books, Independent Published. p. 353-356. (link)
Last, C. 2023. Spirit’s Logic: Zarathustra as the Becoming of Being-Nothing. In: Abyssal Arrows: Spiritual Leadership Inspired by Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Philosophy Portal Books, Independent Published. p. 19-48. (link)
Last, C. 2023. The Importance of Fiction. In: Abyssal Arrows: Spiritual Leadership Inspired by Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Philosophy Portal Books, Independent Published. p. 13-17. (link)
Last, C. 2023. A Note on Thus Spoke Zarathustra. In: Abyssal Arrows: Spiritual Leadership Inspired by Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Philosophy Portal Books, Independent Published. p. 9-10. (link)
Eklöf, J., Hamelryck, T., Last, C., Grima, A. & Snis, U.L. 2023. Abstraction, mimesis and the evolution of deep learning. AI & Society, DOI: 10.1007/s00146-023-01688-z (link)
Last, C. 2023. Systems and Subjects: Thinking the Foundations of Science and Philosophy. Philosophy Portal Books. (link)
Last, C. 2022. Necessity of Absolute Knowing. In: Enter the Alien: Thinking as 21st Century Hegel. Garner, D. & Last, C. (Eds.). Philosophy Portal Books, Independent Published. p. 284-304. (link)
Last, C. 2022. Hegel in the 21st Century. In: Enter the Alien: Thinking as 21st Century Hegel. Garner, D. & Last, C. (Eds.). Philosophy Portal Books, Independent Published. p. 19-32. (link)
Last, C. 2022. Conclusion: Ending with the Beginning (Notional Becoming, Self-Relating Negativity, and Cognition in the Sheer Unrest of Life. In: Enter the Alien: Thinking as 21st Century Hegel. Garner, D. & Last, C. (Eds.). Philosophy Portal Books, Independent Published. p. 305-314. (link)
Last, C., Bard, A. & Garner, D. 2022. Enter the Alien: Thinking as 21st Century Hegel. Garner, D. & Last, C. (Eds.). Philosophy Portal Books, Independent Published. (link)
Last, C. 2021. The Difference Between Neuroscience and Psychoanalysis: Irreducibility of Absence to Brain States. Neuropsychoanalysis, 1-12. DOI: 10.1080/15294145.2021.1926312. (link)
Last, C. & Ezan, P. 2021. Self Development with Dialectics: Nature of One and the Other. In: The Practice of Thinking: Cultivating the Extraordinary. Lenartowicz, M. & Weinbaum, D. (Eds.). Academia Press. (link)
Last, C., Orosz, K., Dick, D. 2020. Sex, Masculinity, God: The Trialogues. Ouroboros Publishing LLC. (link)
Last, C. 2020. Global Brain Singularity: Universal History, Future Evolution and Humanity’s Dialectical Horizon. Springer. (link)
Last, C. 2020. Global Brain: Foundations for a Distributed Singularity. In: The 21st Century Singularity and Global Futures. A Big History Perspective. Ed. D.J. LePoire. Springer. p. 363-375. (link)
Last, C. 2019. Symbolic Orders and Structure of Universal Internalization. In: Evolution: Evolutionary Trends and Aspects. Ed. L.E. Grinin & A.V. Korotayev. Volgograd: Publishing House ‘Uchitel’. p. 32-54. (link)
Last, C. 2019. Žižek and Peterson: Demonstrating the Importance of Higher Order Dialogue. International Journal of Žižek Studies, 13(2): 1-37. ISSN: 1751-8229. (link)
Last, C. 2018. A Reflective Note for Dialectical Thinkers. International Journal of Žižek Studies, 12(4): 1-48. ISSN: 1751-8229. (link)
Last, C. 2018. Cosmic Evolutionary Philosophy and a Dialectical Approach to Technological Singularity. Information, 9(4): 78. DOI: 10.3390/info9040078. (link)
Last, C. 2017. Big Historical Foundations for Deep Future Speculations: Cosmic Evolution, Atechnogenesis, and Technocultural Civilization. Foundations of Science, 22(1): 39-124. DOI: 10.1007/s10699-015-9434-y. (link)
Last, C. 2017. Global Commons in the Global Brain. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 114: 48-64. DOI: 10.1016/j.techfore.2016.06.013. (link)
Last, C. 2015. Information-energy metasystem model. Kybernetes, 44(8/9), pp. 1298-1309. DOI: 10.1108/K-11-2014-0231. (link)
Last, C. 2015. Human Metasystem Transition (HMST) Theory. Journal of Evolutionary & Technology, 25(1), 1-16. (link)
Last, C. 2014. Human Evolution, Life History Theory, and the End of Biological Reproduction. Current Aging Science, 7(1), 1-8. DOI: 10.2174/1874609807666140521101610. (link)
Last, C. 2014. Global Brain and the Future of Human Society. World Future Review, 6(2), 143-150. DOI: 10.1177/194675. (link)
Last, C. & Muh, B. 2013. Effects of Human Presence on Chimpanzee Nest Location in the Lebialem-Mone Forest Landscape, Southwest Region, Cameroon. Folia Primatologica, 84: 51-63. (link)
Last, C. 2013. The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution (2009) by Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending. vis-a-vis: Explorations of Anthropology, 12(1), 120-123. (link)
Open Source Video Series
Less Than Nothing
What Is Sex?
Phenomenology of Spirit
Return to Freud
Dialectical Thinking
Philosophical Conversations
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Science of Logic
