Writing for (a) First Cause
LANGUAGE, HISTORY, MATERIALISM: ANALYTIC TRUTH OF THE SUBJECT.
INSPIRED BY THE COURSE / SPEAKER LIST + RECORDED VIDEOS BELOW
MEANING OF THE CONFERENCE TITLE
The live event for the conference is over, but in 2024 Philosophy Portal is focusing on building a live event space. To find out more or to get involved check the link below:
Scroll down for the recorded version of the conference:
Philosophy Portal Membership
LIVE EVENT SPACE, FOUR LIVE EVENTS EVERY MONTH:
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 our live event spaces, book clubs, community publications, discounts on recorded courses, permanent early bird pricing on future courses, and priority to apply for retreats. Couples are encouraged get a 2 for 1 deal.
DAY 1
The Écrits in a Nutshell
Cadell Last
Cadell Last is the creator/founder of Philosophy Portal, an online education platform, as well as author of Global Brain Singularity and Systems and Subjects, two books which aim to think both an evolutionary theory of biocultural human becoming in the context of technological singularity, as well as a new relation between general systems science and modern continental philosophy, applicable to sociohistorical analysis. His specific philosophical teachings orbit Žižekian coordinates and tensions.
So, What About Lacan’s Style?
Dimitri Crooijmans
Dimitri Crooijmans is a young Philosopher and Rapper, blending melodic bars and speculative thoughts together, to gather ad-libs; to outstrip, no not slip in the knot.
Find out more: bio.site/Actualspirit
The Thing-In-Itself From Kant to Hegel to Lacan
Jason Bernstein
Jason Bernstein is interested in the debates between the Hegelian and Kantian lines of thought, as well as their profound and enduring consequences today, with special regards to questions about the existential implications of "having been evolved."
You can find his substack at: https://issubject.substack.com
Scene vs. Milieu Pt. II
David McKerracher
David McKerracher (M.A.) is the organiser for, and founder of, Theory Underground, a course-based social media site and app by and for people who don’t belong anywhere: drop outs, blue collar intellectuals, and renegade PMCs. McKerracher’s background is in critical theory, political philosophy, existentialism and phenomenology.
Cold Love
Jurij Jukic
Jurij Jukic is a software engineer with a focus on the edge of technology and philosophy. He dropped out of maths college and tried building a startup on Urbit. He is interested in the social consequences of technology, and currently figuring out what to build next.
You can find him on Twitter: @JurijJukic
Psychoanalysis and Thelema
Owen Cox
Owen Cox is a writer and artist based in London, UK. He is working on Dark Renaissance Productions, a new events company bringing leading-edge network culture into physical space. His current projects are at the intersection of 21st century occultism, electronic music, reality-based wellbeing, and theatre.
Towards a Universal Concept of True Will
Davide Pasti
As a philosopher, filmmaker, and visual artist, I explore the nexus of magick, psychoanalysis, and philosophy, aiming to render complex ideas accessible through narrative cinema. My work seeks to bridge abstract concepts with everyday experiences, inviting a broader audience into the world of philosophical discourse.
You can find his personal website at davidepasti.com.
On The Effect Of Affect Naming In Clinical Listening
Edie Hitchcock
Edie Hitchcock Ph.D holds a doctorate in Philosophy, Art, and Critical Thought from the European Graduate School and is an Advanced Candidate at the Chicago Institute for Psychoanalysis. Her dissertation centred on being-in-relation and using clinical psychoanalytic listening as a methodology to approach questions of what we owe to the other. She currently writes on clinical listening, non-traditional relational structures, and the philosophical differences between psychoanalytic schools of thought. She maintains a psychoanalytic private practice in Chicago, IL.
Lacanian Stewardship/Confessions of a Dangerous Horseboy
Phillip Shinn
Phillip Shinn is a writer, actor, and financial planner. His intellectual influences include Plotinus, Arendt, Hegel, Reich, Lacan, Weil, Illich, and Žižek. His most recent publication is “The Soldering of the American Mind” in Underground Theory, and “Es Ist So” in Philosophy Portal’s upcoming Science of Logic anthology.
You can find him on Instagram: @fillupfresh
The (Love)Craft That Moves the Sun and Other Stars
Daniel L. Garner
Daniel L. Garner of O.G. Rose spent several years working collaboratively with other artists at Eunoia, a creative community. Rose helped develop, and now lives on a farm, manages a wedding venue named Mead Lake Lodge, and teaches piano using visuals from the DLG Pattern Method. A finalist for the UNO Press Lab Prize and Pushcart Nominee, Rose’s creative works appear at The Write Launch, Iowa Review, Burningword, Broken Pencil, and elsewhere, with published works on Amazon.
Professional page: https://www.og-rose.com
Lacan’s Crazy Wisdom
Thomas Hamelryck
What happens to the archaic human in a digital, AI-driven, hyper-networked world? Thomas Hamelryck, a researcher in machine learning and bioinformatics by day, approaches this question building on the ideas of the French-American anthropologist and literary scholar René Girard, and by engaging in explorative discussions with thinkers, philosophers, artists and futurologists.
Professional page: https://thamelry.github.io
Courtly Love, Or, Woman as Thing From Inner Space
Russell Sbriglia
Russell Sbriglia is a teacher and researcher with a focus on American literature as well as critical theory situated at the intersection of literature and philosophy and literature and psychoanalysis. His scholarship examines American Romantic writers through various engagements with German Idealist philosophy producing glimpses of what would later become fundamental psychoanalytic concepts.
Love of Truth in Lacan’s Later Thought
Samuel McCormick
Samuel McCormick, Ph.D. is Professor of Communication Studies at San Francisco State University and host of “Lectures on Lacan,” an online lecture series dedicated to clear, coherent, and accessible readings of key texts in Lacanian psychoanalysis.
Linktree: Lectures on Lacan
State of the Relation Between Philosophy and Psychoanalysis
Samuel McCormick, Russell Sbriglia, Cadell Last
DAY 2
Reading Lacan Closely
Dimitri Crooijmans
Dimitri Crooijmans is a young Philosopher and Rapper, blending melodic bars and speculative thoughts together, to gather ad-libs; to outstrip, no not slip in the knot.
Find out more: bio.site/Actualspirit
The Sociopolitical Stakes of Lacanian Diagnosis
Chetan Anand
Chetan is research scholar at TISS (Mumbai) from India. His research covers different fields: anthropology, philosophy, and psychoanalysis. He explores the points at which the individual and social converges and diverges. Psychoanalysis emerges here not just confined to its clinical dimensions but in service of the ways it can lend itself to generate concepts that break open both the individual and the social to be able to concretely trace the limits of both, thus trace the limits of our world.
Reflections on the Melancholic Subject
Jyoti Dalal
I teach at Institute of Home Economics, University of Delhi. My university training has been in sociology and education, but from last few years, I have been dabbling in philosophy, anthropology and recently in psychoanalysis, exploring the in-between spaces of these disciplines where ideas and probably lives also thrive.
Enjoying Technics: Extimacy in Extension
Sahil Sasidharan
Sahil is pursuing a Ph.D. in (Human) Geography at the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a metaphilosophical side quest to (re)think Bernard Stiegler's conception of technics in the generative speculative milieu of Lacanian psychoanalysis and Žižekian dialectical materialism.
Truth Gains Appearance By Inhabiting Fiction
Kalyani Vaishnavi
With a background in English Literature, I have been, for a while now, pondering over the nature of storytelling and its relationship with truth. Philosophy Portal and a Hegel reading group have helped me address the same in light of the concept of 'contradiction' in the Hegelian dialectic.
The Origin of the World
James Wisdom
James Wisdom is an artist and educator with a Master of Fine Arts in Studio Art from the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana. He has also worked as a full-time instructor at the American Academy of Art College, teaching various art theory and practice classes. After being an avid reader for the last decade, he has begun to write philosophy, and has contributed to the Philosophy Portal Anthologies, Enter The Alien and Abyssal Arrows. He has been studying Philosophy at the Portal since 2022. James's experiences in the spheres of art and education showcase his commitment to tarrying with the negativity of lifelong learning and creative evolution.
The Full World and the Splitting of Sublimation
Łukasz Silski
I'm a philosophy student, currently working on my master's thesis on the concept of sublimation. I'm interested in the intersection of political philosophy and psychoanalysis, aiming to become an analyst. Also big on comedy.
Cross Your Heart and Hope to Die
Nicole Foerster
Nicole is a health care professional and human rights activist primarily organising at the forefront of US and Colorado based drug policy reform movements. Lately, this work has deepened their interest in interfaith dialogue as it intersects with public policy, psychoanalysis, and philosophy.
Transitional Discourses: Exoteric and the Esoteric
Matthew Stanley
Matthew Stanley writes about religion, philosophy, and psychoanalysis at Samsara Diagnostics, and also hosts the podcast Samsara Audio. He has published on Heidegger, the Kyoto School, Hegel, and, most recently, a book on Shusaku Endo's novel Silence. Matthew is a board member of the Sacramento Psychoanalytic Society, and lives in Northern California with his wife and son.
Death to Immortal Drive: Freud to Žižek via Zupančič
Cadell Last
Cadell Last is the creator/founder of Philosophy Portal, an online education platform, as well as author of Global Brain Singularity and Systems and Subjects, two books which aim to think both an evolutionary theory of biocultural human becoming in the context of technological singularity, as well as a new relation between general systems science and modern continental philosophy, applicable to sociohistorical analysis. His specific philosophical teachings orbit Žižekian coordinates and tensions.
Static Drive
Alex Ebert
Alex Ebert is an incidental musician and philosopher (among too many other things, incidentally). His interest in Hegelian philosophy began (unbeknownst to him) more than a decade ago, with his development of a peculiar mathematical function (magnetic zeros). Said function is now the centerpiece of his Hegelian philosophy of sublation (freQ theory), and, for better or worse, serves as his platinum-selling band’s name.
The Direction of Desire
Mark Gerard Murphy
Mark Gerard Murphy is a theologian and philosopher with 15+ years of professional experience as a teacher, lecturer and module convener. He is recognised with excellence as an instructor of theology, ethics and spirituality as well as author of The Direction of Desire (2023), a book experimenting at the intersection of Lacanian psychoanalysis and mystical theology to inform modern spiritual direction.
By the Grace of Lacan
Barry Taylor
Barry Taylor lives in London where he explores the human experience through the lenses of theology, philosophy, psychoanalysis and the arts. He feels that it is possible to develop ideas without anchoring to a particular tradition or school of thought. His current fascinations are with things that do not fit into our theoretical grids. He posts regularly on Instagram at @ukbloke and writes and speaks on Patreon.com/barrytaylor.
Negativities of Spiritual Direction and Religion Today
Barry Taylor, Mark Gerard Murphy, Cadell Last
