Welcome to The Portal
The Portal is an online philosophy community building a future-oriented learning network.
Members get access to four live philosophical events every month and our entire recorded history.
Origins
The Portal grew out of the first two years of course work at Philosophy Portal focused on great works in continental philosophy and psychoanalytic theory. Learning the foundations of philosophy is essential, but so is creating spaces where philosophy can come to life, in both community context, and at the intersection of engaging a real network. The Portal is the result of this double commitment: community building and network engagement. As a result, it offers a unique and priceless educational opportunity, to both cultivate the capacity to think in community, as well as struggle in the differences between communities to generate novel connections.
Our Community
The Portal as community has met weekly since January 2024. Throughout our first year, the community months were organised around "meta-themes” of sexuality, community, and metaphysics, and entertained a wide variety of thinkers from the underground philosophy/theory scenes, as well as liminal web cultural scenes. Each month a different key theoretical concept was developed (e.g. "libido”, "communism”, "self-reference”, "democracy”, "transhumanism”, “holy spirit”) in relation to and engagement with thinkers-practitioners associated with the aforementioned scenes. As a result, our community has developed the capacity to build together, productively navigate a wide diversity of ideas and collaboratively network with a wide diversity of people. In our second year, 2025, we have been working in more sustained month-long processes with different people and organisations. These processes have mediated many different major identities and themes (e.g. "Integral theory”, "Marxism and politics”, "Christianity today”, “Literature and art”, "Men’s and women’s work”, "ancient philosophy”) attempting to forge connections and build opportunities for future thinking and collaboration that can birth new ways of seeing and new ways of creating together. Throughout 2025, members also had access to the Slovenian School Reading Group focused on the works of Alenka Zupancic, Mladen Dolar, and Slavoj Zizek; the Sex and Society Sharing Circle focused on sexuality, identity, performativity, social reality, and politics; as well as the Deleuze and Analysis course developing the philosophical interconnection between the works of Gilles Deleuze and the works of Jacques Lacan, as well as demonstrating their relevant to contemporary continental philosophy.
Members
The members of The Portal are the life blood of all the work at Philosophy Portal. Members of The Portal comprise a wide demographic and a wide field of interests. What unites the members of The Portal is the commitment to life-long learning in community, as well as cultivation of that skill at the edge of intersecting communities. Members have access to four live events every month as part of our primary meeting schedule. These events are hosted live on either Sundays or Mondays at 830pm Central European Time (CET) or 230pm Eastern Standard Time (EST) or 1130am Pacific Standard Time (PST). Some members of The Portal attend all or most of the live events, some members of The Portal attend once a month or for a month that is specifically geared to their interests, and some members of The Portal choose primarily access the recordings (which are always uploaded one day after a live event). All members of The Portal are given access to a mailing list where they receive updates for new live events as well as updates when the recording as been uploaded to our private portal. On top of the four live events every month, members of The Portal get automatic access to extra projects, including sharing circles, reading groups, and even select full courses being developed by our professors.
Our Leaders
The Portal is also made possible by the people who lead our events. Cadell Last is the creator and founder of Philosophy Portal, as well as the host for all core member events. Last is responsible for organising the main member months as well as associated events, courses, and programs. Dimitri Crooijmans is the leader of the Slovenian School Reading Group which focuses on the works of Alenka Zupancic, Mladen Dolar, and Slavoj Zizek. Rebecca Rose Prentice is the leader of the Sex and Society Sharing Circle which focuses on sexuality, identity, performativity, social reality, and politics. We have also started to build out a formal professorship with teachers developing the Philosophy Portal courses and curriculum. In 2025 Prof. Terence Blake taught a year long course focused on Deleuze and Analysis, and in 2026, Prof. Chris Cutrone will be teaching a year long course focused on Marxism and Politics.
Portal Leaders
Cadell Last
Dimitri Crooijmans
Rebecca Prentice
Portal Profs.
Terence Blake
Chris Cutrone
Our Collaborators and Guests
The Portal is committed to building a real para-academic network, and the people who we host are the key to this construction. We are not only interested in engaging with thinkers in one-off events but building long-term with a variety of different individuals, groups, organisations, and projects. The aim of this work is to actually embody an alternative style of intellectual life that is life-long, transdisciplinary, and transcendent of traditional institutional academic incentives. The hope is that through our collaborations both members of The Portal and guests to each month of work, form an informal backbone of a para-academic network that is both global and local, virtual and physical. In the history of our recordings, you will find figures from both the underground theory/philosophy scenes and the liminal web cultural scenes. Below you will find the collaborators whose work can be found in the recorded history of The Portal and whose projects make the para-academic network possible.
Portal 2024
Layman Pascal
Alenka Zupancic
Eliot Rosenstock
Carl H. Smith
David McKerracher
Alex Ebert
Andrew Davis
Ruth E. Kastner
Matthew Segall
Barry Taylor
Nina Power
Alyssa Polizzi
O.G. Rose
Peter Limberg
Greg Dember
Owen Cox
Thomas Hamelryck
Paris Jayer
Helen Rollins
Benjamin Studebaker
Daniel Fraga
Clement Vidal
Arran Rogerson
Timothee Bres
Mark G. Murphy
Genevieve Pleasure
Fotis Tsiroukis
Jim Palmer
Olivier Auber
Naomi Roth
Katherine Everitt
Sinziana Ravini
Portal 2025
Layman Pascal
Bruce Alderman
Schuyler Brown
Chris Cutrone
Jim Palmer
Brendan G. Dempsey
Rob Zahn
Kevin Crouse
Ross Byrd
Christian Baxter
O.G. Rose
Holly Rhiannon
Pae Veo
Mike Watson
Bram E. Gieben
Adam C. Turl
Matthew Green
Jacob Kishere
Dylan Shaul
Michel Bauwens
Michael Downs
Helen Rollins
Alfie Bown
Our Promise to Members
Our promise to members is to continue building the best philosophy space online, and that will include long-term commitment to our original vision, but also innovations designed to push our work further. The bottom line: The Portal aims to be the best education for the lowest price. As The Portal continues to grow and build, we will aim to provide more for less. We will also continue to try and be a space that is genuinely open to real inquiry and investigation, the cultivation of a philosophical mindset, and the application of that mindset to active engagement with living people and projects required to birth a para-academic network capable of thinking a truly global world.
Philosophy Portal is an online education platform opening space for the next generation of great thought, and cultivation of future philosophical mind. Philosophy Portal members get access to The Portal live event spaces, book clubs, either free or discounted access to courses, permanent early bird pricing on future courses, and priority to apply for retreats. Couples are encouraged get a 2 for 1 deal.
Home of a philosophical community building a future-oriented learning network
Continental Philosophy. Psychoanalytic Theory. Emancipatory Politics. Radical Theology.
We host four live philosophical events every month. Members get access to entire recorded history.