Philosophy for The Resonant Man
Reflecting on my philosophical history with men's work, and the way my philosophy can serve men's work
This July 2025, The Portal will be hosting
of and of for a month long investigation inspired by their men’s work project “The Resonant Man”. If you want to sign up for the month, the easiest way to get involved, is to register directly through The Resonant Man itself. You can find all details at the link below:The schedule for the four events we will be hosting can be found below:
If you are interested in participating through The Portal directly, the easiest way is to either become a member of The Portal, or register for “Summer at The Portal 2025”, which will give you access to the four events with The Resonant Man, plus four events focused on the Philosophy of Theology with Dylan Shaul, as well as two events with
’s new “” circle at The Portal. You can find links to both The Portal and “Summer at The Portal 2025” below:
What is philosophy? Philosophy Portal’s foundations have been Hegelian,1 but we are also currently running a course focused on the work of Gilles Deleuze, whose work is often framed as the anti-thesis to Hegel.2 Either way, it would not be too much of a stretch to suggest that Hegel and Deleuze represent the pinnacles of 19th and 20th century philosophy, respectively.3
For Hegel and Deleuze, philosophy meant something decidedly different than the traditional or classical notion of philosophy as the “love of wisdom”. For Hegel and Deleuze, this classical notion of philosophy still thinks too much about wisdom as some externally pre-given object that we simply need to remember through deep contemplation. In fact, Hegel opens his Phenomenology with a reflection suggesting that if classical philosophy was the “love of wisdom (or knowing)” then his work pointed towards the dimension of “actual wisdom (or knowing)”.4
We can hypothesise that Hegel’s distinction here is trying to get at the starting point of his entire Phenomenology, which forwards the idea that what has classically passed for “actual cognition” is nothing but “stating aims” without “carrying it out”.5 In other words, the “love of wisdom” might be the “stated aims” of philosophy, but “actual wisdom” can only be found in “carrying it out” (and perhaps here wisdom classically defined can be a road block). Thus, when we think about thinkers like Hegel and Deleuze, we should not only think about them in juxtaposition to classical thinkers like Plato and Aristotle, but rather see that their very historical position as philosophers (as operating in the several thousand-years old “footnotes” of Plato and Aristotle), allows them to think about what philosophies stated aims had become in the actuality of history.
Slavoj Žižek, the greatest living Hegelian, “generally opposes wisdom” as a “conformist knowing”. Here we might want to reflect on the stereotype of pre-modern philosophy as reflecting a more unified social substance under the Good, whereas modern philosophy is reflecting the vicissitudes of subjective individuation under Freedom. Consider Žižek’s particularly violent attack on the notion of wisdom:6
“I think wisdom is the most disgusting thing you can imagine. Wisdom is the most conformist thing you can imagine. Wisdom is whatever you do, a wise man will come, and justify it. You do something risky and succeed. There will be a wise man who will come and say something like “only those who risk profit”. Let’s say you do the same thing but fail. A wise man will come and he will say something like “you cannot urinate against the wind”. This is wisdom.”
So what would be, for Hegel, actual wisdom or knowing against this classical wisdom which is basically an immediate statement unreflective of its own contradiction? (i.e. that you can state something seemingly wise which retroactively justifies whatever the actual outcome for a stated aim was). For Hegel, in the Philosophy of Right, he states that philosophy is one’s “time apprehended in thoughts”. Here is the full context of Hegel’s philosophical idea about philosophy:7
“To apprehend what is is the task of philosophy, because what is is reason. As for the individual, every one is a son of his time; so philosophy also is its time apprehended in thoughts.”
In this context, Hegel is suggesting that the domain of philosophy is apprehension of “is-ness”; whereas we might say the Marxist reaction and inversion is the necessity of practical politics as the “ought-ness”; so when we think Hegel-Marx as a non-orientable surface,8 we are then thinking the unity of “philosophy-politics” as the unity of “isness-oughtness”.
What is crucial not to miss here, however, is the way Hegel is also thinking about each singularity (individual) of individuated rational processes (re: “every one is a son of his time”), and that in many ways the political burden of modern philosophy is that each “son of his time” is required to cultivate their own philosophical cognition about their time in thought. We might wager that if this burden and responsibility is not taken up, then the entire possibility of Marxist politics, becomes untenable, even impossible.9 In this very practical way, we cannot think of the movement from Hegel to Marx as a linear completion (as if now Marxists can “wash their hands” of Hegel).10
On the other hand, Deleuze’s concept of philosophy is not related to “time apprehended in thoughts”, but rather the “creation of concepts”.11 From Deleuze and Guattari directly:12
“What Is Philosophy? is not a primer or a textbook. It more closely resembles a manifesto produced under the slogan “Philosophers of the world, create!” It is a book that speaks about philosophy, and about philosophies and philosophers, but it is even more a book that takes up arms for philosophy. Most of all, perhaps, it is a book of philosophy as a practice of the creation of concepts.”
Again, here, we cannot miss the implicit connections to Marxism. If Marx was calling for the negation of (Hegelian) philosophy and moving into practical politics,13 then Deleuze, as an anti-Hegelian, is taking up the Marxist challenge of thinking philosophy after Marxism.14
For Deleuze (and Guattari), philosophy is the construction site of the creation of concepts, each concept is an intensive multiplicity inscribed on a plane of immanence15 — which is a fancy (conceptually creative) way for saying concepts have no relation to the “dead One” of Platonist classical philosophical fantasy of the Good, and are instead in a radically open process of becoming — as machines operated by “conceptual personae”.16
There is a way in which Deleuze’s philosophical project and Hegel’s philosophical project can find overlap or similarities in the sense that, for Hegel, each “son of his time” is responsible for apprehending that time; and, for Deleuze, each philosopher is not contained by the “Goodness of the One”, but is engaged with intensive multiplicity practicing the work of creation itself. However, Hegel can be seen as “more conservative” in the sense that the philosopher is not necessarily creating anything new, but more reflecting what is; and Deleuze can be seen as “more progressive” in the sense that the philosopher is positioned as a creative force intervening into the real itself.
Throughout my philosophical career, I have seen reason for both approaches, and in many ways have enacted both approaches. There have been moments where I felt the need to create a new concept,17 and also moments where I felt the need to creatively intervene into the real itself.18 And then at the same time, I have mainly used philosophy to escape from reductionist university programs containing my thought to a level preventing it from thinking “one’s own time” as a whole (which obviously cannot be contained by any one discipline).19 Over time, I have certainly gravitated to the “conservative wisdom” of reflecting “what is” over proposing new radical interventions; but at the same time, learning when and how to intervene, is absolutely critical and crucial. In regards to the creation of concepts, I have certainly gravitated more towards using well-worn and well-tested concepts (e.g. absolute knowing, sublation, sublimation, libido, death drive) over creating my own; but at the same time, sometimes you approach a phenomena without the right signifier, or without a signifier that works, and that moment may call forth and demand creativity. Indeed, our time is so complex, it would surprise me if we didn’t find ourselves in situations where we needed new concepts.
Nevertheless, throughout this article, I will use the “Hegelian foundation” for communicating my philosophical story as it specifically relates to “men’s work”, but I may also need to not only create a concept or two, but in the telling of the story, articulate how it is I felt called to intervene in the real, as opposed to simply reflecting what is. First off, the reason for telling this story is that I recently participated in a men’s work retreat with The Resonant Man,20 which inspired me to both reflect on my history with men’s work, as well as articulate the reasons why I felt their work represented a unique offering in the field of men’s work itself.
I will start my story with the rise of Jordan B. Peterson to international superstardom, because I do not think I would have ever entered the space of men’s work if it were not for the Peterson phenomenon. In my entire intellectual history, I do not know of an intellectual who rose to fame as quickly as Peterson did. It was truly an overnight phenomenon: in only a few months it felt like Peterson went from an obscure unknown university professor teaching about the psychology of myths as a passion project,21 to becoming the most viewed and most sought after guest on the internet.22
The “perfect storm” that was the Peterson phenomenon was the result, of two things, in my opinion:
His critique of Woke politics as an unconscious religion and result of the academic-intellectual hegemony of “post-modern neo-Marxism”;23 and
His provisioning of an opening for secular liberals and evolutionary atheists to reflect/think about the psychological significance of religion.24
I had in a way a unique relationship to the Peterson phenomenon because I had completed both my undergraduate and masters degree at McMaster University and University of Toronto (where Peterson was teaching and practicing psychology), and I had done so in a department that straddled the culture war boundary between biology and culture (anthropology). I was aware of the culture of “post-modern neo-Marxism” that he spoke of, and I was aware of the divides it had been creating between the more “evolutionary sciences” or “hard sciences” style of intellectual, and the more “critical humanities” or “socio-cultural” style of intellectual. As a result of this proximity, both geographically and intellectually, to the problems that the Peterson phenomenon was addressing, I felt like the early Peterson was speaking directly to someone like me. But the phenomenon obviously couldn’t be reduced to that, since it seemed like many young men felt that Peterson was speaking to someone like them.
I remember vividly, from both my undergraduate and graduate days in anthropology, that the Woke political phenomenon was very real, and had material effects on me, not only as a young man, but as a young white man. It was not unusual for me to feel like my very presence at the university was problematic. What made this experience even more strange, was that, politically speaking, I spontaneously identified as something like a “left liberal”. My political sensibilities were in principle aligned with those that identified as Woke, except that they seemed to take these basic principles (e.g. what is now called “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion”), and pushed them to absurd extremes that seemed to undermine the basic premises of the 1968 civil rights and counter-cultural revolutions. It was almost as if, internal to liberal secular culture, Woke politics represented a new and strange type of religion, but not only a new and strange type of religion, a new and strange type of pagan religion, which operates on the basis of scapegoating an enemy and claiming victimhood. This enemy could be represented in various forms, but I don’t think it is a caricature to say that, in the abstract, it was something like “white Western Christian patriarchy”.25 Funny enough, the irony of this phenomenon, is that — at least from the perspective of an anthropologist like René Girard — the historical social function of Christianity, was itself to usurp this form of pagan religion, by revealing the scapegoating mechanism, as evident in the story of Christ.26
The other side of the Peterson phenomenon, the opening for secular liberals and evolutionary atheists to reflect/think about the psychological significance of religion, seemed intimately bound up with the unconscious “religion of Woke politics”. Perhaps this was a result of the fact that theology and politics, whether we like it or not, appear linked (e.g. theopolitics). Of course, the modern world, and the birth of liberal democracy, operates on the presupposition of the necessity of their separation. Now we might find ourselves in a situation where this separation itself is being called into question: can they be separated? At the very least, it seems like theological concerns and dimensions, can appear internal to purely political concerns and dimensions. For example, when you read the perspectives of left-oriented climate activists, you get the sense that “climate apocalypse” functions as an “end times” scenario;27 or when you read the perspective of right-wing tech-accelerationists, you get the sense that “AI apocalypse” functions as an “end times” scenario.28 Here secular liberal politics and evolutionary atheistic approaches to knowing (on both the left and right), appeared to be short-circuited from within by both the hegemony of Woke politics (itself grounded by “post-modern neo-Marxism”), as well as the Peterson phenomenon itself as foregrounding the importance of religious myths for our psyche.29 All of a sudden it became common place for secular liberals and evolutionary atheists to start “wrestling” with the problem of God, and the historical function of religion.30 Had our society taken a wrong turn? Was there a hierarchy of religion? Did Western culture need to reintegrate religion in order to deal with global pluralism? How do we make sense of the fact that politics can get hi-jacked by an unconscious religiosity?31
While this phenomenon was unfolding I had started my doctorate on the other side of the Atlantic, in Brussels with the Center Leo Apostel (CLEA) at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB).32 At CLEA/VUB I had some distance from the Woke politics that had captured North American institutions (although it would gradually infiltrate Europe as well), but recognised that my own political identity had been severely disrupted, on seemingly the most fundamental levels. Not only did my politics feel ungrounded from any theological level (I was basically a secular liberal, evolutionary atheist), but the very politics that resonated with my sensibilities, seemed to have led to results that, I not only disagreed with, but which as suggested above, seemed to disagree with my very being. I thought it had become a legitimate concern that the direction of liberal secular politics and evolutionary atheistic thinking was undermining both free speech and meritocracy; both dimensions that Peterson spoke to and attempted to address with recourse to what appeared to me as a theological layer.
At the same time, while I followed closely the Peterson phenomenon, there was a large part of me that felt in great dis-ease about the whole thing. Not only did I agree with figures like Gabor Maté, that Peterson’s general messaging seemed important, but the style in which he communicated his message, seemed to come from a place of deep unconscious anger and rage;33 but I also saw the Peterson phenomenon as part of a general turn to what was becoming something like the “counter-cultural right wing”. Peterson’s work represented a liberal reaction against any telos towards socialism,34 it represented a straw-manning of both French structuralism (“post-modernism”) as well as Marxism (“neo-Marxism”), two schools that I felt were indispensable, and also more thoroughly and accurately represented by the Ljubljana School’s Hegelo-Lacanian interpretations.35 I have also come to see the rise of Peterson as part of a general cultural turn that also led to and culminated in the rise of Donald Trump, and now a general rise of right wing populism that is sweeping North America and Europe. In retrospect, my hypothesis is that the 1968 counter-culture of the left (which was perhaps best represented intellectually by French structuralism, the works of figures like Lacan, Althusser, Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze, etc.), reached a kind of hegemonic peak in Woke politics (connected to a Leftism that was itself disconnected from its own history, perhaps purposefully, perhaps conveniently, perhaps unconsciously); and had now provoked a return of the repressed.
My current hypothesis is that this return of the repressed as a right-wing counter-cultural force, is only just taking its full form;36 and that left liberal subjectivity has not sufficiently mourned the loss of its (socialist) object.37 What is clear is that it is fairly easy today, perhaps especially for young white men, to turn right-wing, if not just generally become right-coded (e.g. Joe Rogan); and exceptionally difficult today, perhaps especially for young white men, to follow through with a left-wing politics. From approximately 2016 onwards, my approach in this climate has been to occupy the position of a critique of the Left from the position of a Leftist.38 The principle is something like a critical attitude, as opposed to an enabling attitude, as the only way to save something (or someone) you love from its own immanent self-destruction. Consider Žižek’s opinion on the topic:39
“While the Woke Left systematically destroys its own foundation (the European emancipatory tradition), the Right finally gathered the courage to question the obscenity of its own tradition. In an act of cruel irony, the Western democratic tradition which usually praises itself for including self-criticism (democracy has flaws, but also includes striving to overcome its flaws…), now brought this self-critical stance to extreme — “equality” is a mask of its opposite, etc., so that all that remains is the tendency towards self-destruction.”
In general, I have come to see the position of a Leftist as something that is inherently more difficult, and perhaps requires a higher order of self-responsibility, insofar as to be a Leftist, is to think dialectically — from the position of contradiction — as opposed to thinking from the position of identity.40 In other words, while a conventional Right wing conservative can merely look to the past of identity for a stable ground and orientation to be applied to the present, a real Left wing progressive has to tarry with an object that does not (yet) exist (socialist politics).41
I have since attempted to bolster this hypothesis with inspiration and resources from the work of political theorist Chris Cutrone, whose most recent work Marxism and Politics, attempts to reconnect the contemporary Left (“Death of the Millennial Left”) to its own historical memory via the foregrounding of the following evental lineage:42
1776/1789: brith of liberal democracy (French/American revolutions)
1848: conflict between liberal democracy and industrial capitalism
1917: introduction of forms of socialism beyond liberal democracy
1968: neoliberal centring of sexual-gender-racial otherness/diversity
2010s: attempt and failure to re-establish socialist party politics
After the failure of the Sanders campaign, and the election of Trump in 2016, Cutrone announced the “death” of the Millennial Left (which coincides in my own story of the rise of the Peterson phenomenon). But what is so helpful in the foregrounding of this evental lineage is the way the concerns, structures, and problems of 1776/1789, 1848, 1917, 1968, and 2010s, needs to be thought as a type of “fractal unity” in the “historical memory of the social body” of emancipatory politics (what Žižek claims the contemporary Left has destroyed). If we lose sight of the entire fractal unity, and historical memory of the social body, then we can easily lose the plot. In the context of what happened to the attempts of the Left to form a socialist politics in the 2010s, and then eventually being overcome by a (neoliberal) Woke politics, in my view, is a result of the Left only remembering 1968, but totally forgetting its connections to 1848 and 1917. The problem is when the concerns of 1968 cover over the concerns of 1848 and 1917, we fall into an identity and expression of neoliberal identity, as opposed to thinking from the perspective of the contradictions of liberal identity in and under a wave of new industrial production (e.g. artificial intelligence), and fighting for a socialist politics (inclusive of all identities, etc.).43
This is all relevant to the point of this article, that is working towards the function of men’s work in my philosophical journey, as well as the function of my philosophy for men’s work. To the point: the Left has not always been antithetical to positive or strong visions of masculinity and masculine leadership. For example, Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, are all embodiments of positive and strong visions of masculinity and masculine leadership. The problem is that these political traditions have led to such catastrophic results (e.g. Stalin, Mao, Pot), that, like Hitler and the Nazi party in the Right wing imaginary, they become taboo subjects and fearful objects. Consider Cutrone specifically on the topic of 1917:44
In the words of Adorno’s writing on the legacy of Lenin, Luxemburg, Korsch, and Lukács, in his last completed book, Negative Dialectics, this way of approaching 1917 and its significance evinced “dogmatization and thought-taboos.”
Nobody wants to think deeply about Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, because no one wants to make the same mistakes that led to the nightmares of 20th century communism. In fact, this proved to be the gap or repressed black hole of the Millennial Left, which got stuck on the question of the state, what to do with the state. Again consider Cutrone’s reflections on the topic:45
My two students who first summoned me to my role as teacher of the Millennial Left were themselves a bit older (graduate students), and came from an anarchist background. They commended my ability to transcend the “authoritarian” vs. “libertarian” divide — but quit Platypus when we came around to reading Lenin.
As a result of this Millennial thought taboo, their state politics ultimately never approached dimensions that would have needed a more reflective contact with the problems of 1848 and 1917 (which are still technically with us in the form of the conflict between liberal democracy and industrial capitalism, as well as the forwarding of a politics that can reconcile the contradiction on a higher order, i.e. socialism).
Now all these thoughts are derived from my more recent, more matured form, which does have its origins in a much more naive and ill-informed space. And that naive and ill-informed space, back in 2016, involved not only the disruption of my aforementioned political position as a left liberal/evolutionary atheist, but also the nature of my basic subjective position as a disoriented sexed subject.46 The Peterson phenomenon, coupled with the Trump election, had so severely disrupted my self-notion that it proved the motivator to search out something like “men’s work”. To be specific, I started just looking for conversations about masculinity and the nature of masculinity today in order to approach the disorientation I felt on both the level of my sexual and professional life. My sexual life was orbiting the pain and trauma of failed monogamous relationships from my early 20s (the collapse of the fantasy of a lifelong monogamous partnership); and my professional life was orbiting an unknown and uncertain future within academia itself (the collapse of the fantasy of a lifelong work as a professor). What type of man did I have to become in order to overcome the pain and trauma of failed monogamous relationships? What type of man did I have to become in order to face the unknown/uncertain future of academia itself? As regards the first problem, I had been putting off facing the pain and the trauma with something like an unethical and confused polyamory; and as regards the second problem, I was too bitter and resentful about the nature of capitalism to fully confront the problem of escaping what appeared to be a sinking ship (academia).
It was in this context that men’s work first spoke to me, and I found men’s work. My first steps in this direction took me away from academic structures. I found two other men, Kevin Orosz, a life coach and spiritual entrepreneur who specialised in body work, yoga and tantra;47 as well as Daniel Dick, a Buddhist practitioner and spiritual seeker who had previous connections to interdisciplinary work in systems science.48 Together we formed a container to host trialogues that eventually became the book Sex, Masculinity, God.49 The trialogues orbited questions that were most alive for me in the context of the Peterson phenomena representing of sexual difference, the counter-culture and masculinity, as well as the uncertain future of both sexuality and professional identity. Some of the major themes can be gleaned from considering the logic of what became the chapter titles themselves:
The Reality of Sexual Difference (recognising a real sex difference which was under-theorised in contemporary gender studies)50
Historical Emergence of Traditional Archetypes (recognising the historicity of normative gender roles)51
Evolutionary Worldview versus Religious Worldview (reflecting the contradiction between evolution and God)52
History of Gender Theory (thinking with alternative geometries for categorising gender identities)53
Contemporary Masculinity and Masculine Movements (critiquing and reconciling with various men’s communities and works)54
Nature of Pain and Suffering in Sexuality (learning to work with the more disturbing aspects of sexed subjectivity)55
Absolutes and Relations (reflecting the contradictions of the way feelings of absoluteness appear internal to intimate relations)56
Ethics and Morality in the Sexual Space (reconciling with the seeming paradox of the ethics of desire for symmetrical morality)57
The Future of Sex (speculating about the future of technology and its potential impacts on our sexual expressions)58
Love and Death (concluding with meditations on the unity of love and death, and the importance of this unity for today)59
In retrospect, what I was trying to do with this dialogue series and eventual book, was explore my intellectual capacities outside of academia, with men who had also found themselves on the outside of academia; as well as explore my own personal and intimate relationship to being a man, outside of the way my ideas of being a man may have been conditioned by my academic professionalisation process. In the end, my efforts in this direction massively helped me to pull together threads about my intellect outside of academia as well as being a man in the 21st century, that have been formative in regards to where I find myself today: happily married with a child on the way, and navigating the complexities of intellectual life mixed with online business. For that gift, I will always be grateful for the process that was unfolding during the Sex, Masculinity, God trialogues.
Towards the publication of Sex, Masculinity, God I actually found myself objectively on the outside of the academic institution. I had completed my doctorate,60 as well as a post-doc,61 and found myself, like the entire world, disoriented by the emergence of the coronavirus pandemic and the resulting lockdown. In this context, I had started to take more seriously my online teaching work. I started a reading group focused on Freudian psychoanalysis, which was grounded for me in my interest in the nature of libido and sexuality more generally;62 as well as an online men’s circle to practically get involved in the problems that I had been wrestling with more intellectually in the trialogues and book Sex, Masculinity, God. This online men’s circle in particular proved to be a helpful vehicle for myself and those who joined during the coronavirus pandemic. During this time, I also moved to London (UK) for about 1 year, and joined a physical men’s circle led by Owen Cox.63 The two circles combined gave me an interesting window into the real struggles of contemporary masculinity, as opposed to the YouTube images and discourse from the “Red Pill” “Manosphere”, which often left the general public with radically distorted images about what men valued and desired. What became central for me at the time, and still to this day, was the unity between the personal and the intellectual or philosophical: that the personal could enrich the philosophical, and the philosophical could enrich the personal.64
At the same time, my philosophical work had found a temporary home and alliance with Alexander Bard’s Intellectual Deep Web (IDW),65 which was also attempting to balance a new philosophical drive with the personal dimension of men’s work. Through Bard and the IDW, I had become connected with the men’s work of the Maniphesto (or at the time: “European Men’s Movement”).66 This work and movement was explicitly aligned and “downstream” of the Jordan B. Peterson phenomenon provoking new interest in the nature of masculinity. However, in taking up the Peterson phenomenon, they had wrestled with its central contradictions in a very different form to the way I had been wrestling with the same contradictions. While the aforementioned negative reaction against Woke politics is where we explicitly found alignment, the counter-reaction towards liberal politics and evolutionary atheism found expression in an explicit identitarian alignment with Orthodox Christianity as the general solution to the problems. In other words, the solution to Woke politics qua unconscious religiosity was a return to the foundational “Orthodox” forms of Christianity that we find at the origin of the Christian tradition. For me, the nature and consequences of men’s work led to different results and conclusions, if more complex and ambiguous.
As a result, the form of men’s work that I found myself in, from my point of view, had turned in a direction that I found inadequate to the level of the problems both men and our society at large confronted. If I could frame the level of the problem simply: Peterson and the men’s culture downstream of Peterson, at both Maniphesto and other associated works that I have become aware of since this time, had basically taken up a literal interpretation Peterson’s message seriously; something like the positivising of a “disciplinary masculinity” (e.g. clean your room, put yourself together, get married and go to church (preferably an Orthodox church)). What perhaps was worse, since I am not in principle “against” these things if understood in proper context, was the way religious metaphysics, and specifically Orthodox Christian metaphysics, was being positioned as a social ontology that can resolve the issues of “white Western Christian patriarchy”.
I felt like this was clearly a reactionary movement that closed the gap and the level of the problem, specifically on the aforementioned level of the history of emancipatory politics. To sum up the problem in a sentence: original Christianity cannot function as a gap for the real of political history. What I was looking for, in the trialogues I hosted, in the online men’s circle I led, as well as the men’s circle I participated in with Owen Cox, was something like an emotional openness and intellectual curiosity, but also the capacity to build a new type of relationality. I might even say, following the work of Dimitri Crooijmans, it was searching for the process of “communisation”.67 I do not think a new religious metaphysics, whether Orthodox or whether any other denomination, can resolve the issues that appear on the personal level of a basic social collapse. The only thing that can address or resolve the personal issues that appear on that level is literally a new type of subjectivity, a type of subjectivity that is capable of relating both personally and professionally with emotional integrity and intellectual honesty, over a simple reduction to self-discipline and traditional repetitions (e.g. going to church). Moreover, the only thing that can address or resolve the issues that appear on the higher order social level is a theology or religious subjectivity that also takes up the challenge of a socialist political history.68
Since breaking with the entire scene related to the IDW and the Maniphesto, I have dedicated most of my time to the construction of Philosophy Portal.69 Here Philosophy Portal positions itself as a force for teaching the foundational texts of the modern world that may be needed to rethink both masculinity and a new social and political project. As mentioned to start this article, there is also a type of Hegelian foundation at work here, which understands philosophy to be the capacity to “apprehend one’s time in thoughts” (as this article is trying to perform). In this space, between 2022-2025, men’s work has been replaced with both the deepening of the relationship with my partner, as well as the deepening of my commitment to the construction of philosophical community (as well as the exploration of the potential of a para-academic network or “community of communities”).70 In this work, I have come to meet many different para-academic or online initiatives, including several groups we have hosted this year, from Layman Pascal and Bruce Alderman’s The Integral Stage inspired by the work of Ken Wilber,71 to participants in Peter Rollins’ Wake Festival struggling with post-evangelical psychoanalytic-inspired theology,72 to the creative writing and philosophy projects at O.G. Rose and Stygian Society focused on the intersection between philosophy and literature,73 to the counter-cultural publishing house Revol Press attempting to think culture and aesthetics of capitalist realism.74
It is in this context that I have stumbled back into men’s work through connections with Matthew Green, Jacob Kishere, and their The Resonant Man project.75
The Resonant Man project, as far as I understand it, focuses on a method related to the work of Thomas Hübl, who specialises in a concept called and a practice of “Collective Healing”.76 Matthew Green and Jacob Kishere will note that their work operates at the intersection of the collapse of the social body (e.g. family, institutions), and the unprocessed collective trauma of European history (e.g. World Wars, Empire building and post-colonial era, etc.). The first problem brings us to the general collapse of the social fabric in which men’s (and women’s) work becomes important; and the second problem brings us to the way our history cannot just be transcended, but must be re-processed through a new reflective capacity to confront our own monstrosity. In my interpretation, while the Peterson phenomenon presences the necessity of confronting both problems, it seems to me that his response to them, as well as those downstream of Peterson’s response to them, have proved inadequate. Here, in the aforementioned history of leftist emancipatory politics, I would say that both the general breakdown of the social fabric and the collective trauma of our own history, are intwined in the failure of a politics capable of containing or even sublimating the forces of capital.77 In neoliberal terms, “society” was turned into the abstraction of “individuals and markets” in service of capital, which leaves barren and empty, the dimensions of family and community, not to mention the institutions that structure civil society, as well as practical and real engagement on the level of state politics for socialism.78
In any case, what I appreciate in specifically The Resonant Man, and the work of Matthew Green and Jacob Kishere, is the way they are dealing with this general breakdown and collapse of the social. They are not doing so with recourse to the reconstruction of a religious metaphysics qua social ontology, but rather probing into the conditions of possibility of birthing a new emergent field from the “material” of the transcendental experiences of alienated man. This is achieved through the very “collective healing” or “resonance work” , which leans into working with subtle emotions, and learning how to express oneself freely within the higher order dynamics of a collective field. All of this is very difficult work: both creatively and emotionally it is a real labour.79 In contrast, it is arguably much easier to institute a form of radical self-discipline and strict adherence to a coherent religious metaphysics, which means you are going to self-enclose within a universe that only mirrors back to you what you already know and think (e.g. Ortho-enclosures). With the religious metaphysics approach, you may actually not be in touch with yourself as a subject (qua self-relating negativity necessary for communisation),80 as well as not really capable of working with the real of relationships.81 With the resonant approach, there is the possibility of learning about yourself on the level of both the real of subjectivity, and the real of relationships, with the radical otherness both in yourself and the actual other.82
I cannot stress enough how the two approaches, although not in a zero-sum conflict, require a dialectical mediation that does not exclude the dimension of actually learning about the self and the other. In the collapse of an implicit background, or social givens (either religiously, politically, or just practically), we cannot merely wish our way back into a new background with new givens (this would be both infantile, and anti-psychoanalytic at its core). We have to learn about the very core level of subjectivity that is required to become social again (self-relating negativity), but at a higher level (socialist politics). This requires working with our own desire and free speech, both on the level of our individual subjectivity as well as on the level of our collective history. Here what I am trying to think is the relationship between the work of The Resonant Man project, and the history of psychoanalysis. Whereas psychoanalysis is seen as the “talking cure”, it was founded within a neurotic society (struggling with repression on the level of family and community), and operating on the basis of an individualised clinical work (re: analyst/analysand). In contrast, The Resonant Man, on the basis of its commitment to “collective healing”, and operating in either a psychotic or a perverted society, where the implicit background and social givens of family and community have broken down, aims to approach the problem of desire and free speech in a different form. While very experimental, I think what I have often appreciated about men’s work is that it is a collective activity, and it is an activity that seeks to reintegrate the subject back into the collective, but without losing the core of the individual.
What I am trying to make sense of in the context of both the retreat with The Resonant Man, as well as our upcoming collaboration in The Portal,83 is how to think the right position of men’s work in the context of social breakdown. It makes sense to me that, in social breakdown, men’s and women’s work becomes essential because we are ultimately generated by individuated sexual essences (“mothers and fathers”). The central principle that I think has guided my attraction to men’s work, as well as my aversion to certain forms of men’s work, is whether or not these principles that I hold dear in psychoanalysis — which are ultimately about the ethics of libido and the conditions of possibility for love — are worked with or obfuscated. If they are worked with, it requires taking the principles of psychoanalysis and embedding them in a collective social field; if they are obfuscated, then that can lead to a kind of perverted abuse of sexual energy, or it can lead to a kind of social reification of sexual energy with religion. To walk the psychoanalytic line in the social field, requires a tremendous emotional intelligence and courageous commitment, to both oneself and otherness.
What I think men’s work at its best can teach, for the individual, is the capacity to cultivate contact with one’s own evil; and that this work is necessary, ultimately, so that one can cultivate the capacity to encounter evil in the social field. What a religious metaphysics is ultimately trying to do is prepare one for the same, but without the actual capacity to explore the singularity of one’s own essence, this can leave one with the illusion of preparedness for the actual event of evil. In my previous contact with men’s work, I in fact did uncover the experiential dimension of my own evil (in my own libidinal actions), and I also encountered evil in the social field (in my own family, and my own professional networks); and both events broke me, as well as taught me almost everything I needed to know about being prepared for what evil this life can and will throw at me (both within and without of myself). But without men’s work, I would not have been held by the fields that I needed to be held by, in order to process my own history, collectively. I see The Resonant Man as not only an expression of this work, but a continuation of this work.
Of course, my personal work is far from over, and it is not linear. What I have overcome in the past could resurface. The fight goes on and the work must go on, which is why I am grateful that The Resonant Man has reconnected me with this part of my own history and story. Without men’s work in the past, I perhaps would not have been able to overcome my own sexuality, and the pain and trauma connected with failed attempts at monogamy; and without men’s work, I perhaps would not have been able to overcome my own fears of leaving academia and testing a life in an online network. Even if both solutions to what I had been struggling with are incomplete and radically open, the very form of subjectivity that I now am is capable of working from a higher place. This higher place presents its own struggles and difficulties (e.g. becoming a father, building a sustainable business), but they are struggles and difficulties that are preferable and even an advance over the struggles and difficulties I have come from. Progress is not the myth of a straight line to utopia, it is circle of circles which brings you to deeper self-contradictions. There are also aspects of my past, my story and history, that I have not been able to overcome, and in this, men’s work is not a panacea for all one’s personal and professional ills. In this, both religion and politics, can play a role that men’s work does not completely cover over. I have come to think of men’s work as a necessary starting ground for spirituality, which will, if engaged in the right way, allow one the capacity to confront religion and politics with a higher degree of fidelity and self-awareness.
Moving forward into this month at The Portal, I am most looking forward to reflecting more deeply how my history with men’s work is connected to the philosophical work I am currently committed to, and how the two can be mutually synergistic. The work at Philosophy Portal is oriented in the space where the sensitivity of man is traced back to the roots of Protestant reformation (e.g. inspired by the Christian Atheism course), where the breaking of hierarchy also represents the potential for every “God-Man” to tarry with his or her own heart. There is a huge responsibility that breaks open here, a responsibility that, arguably, the history of Protestantism has not been able to handle. Either way, from the perspective of Philosophy Portal, this breaking open of the question and struggles of the “God-Man” also open us into German Idealism, where every “God-Man” is not only tarrying with his or her own heart, but his or her own heart-mind (intuition and concept, feeling and thinking). Again, the stakes and the responsibility move towards a higher plane, one that arguably, and again, German Idealism has not been able to handle. Now this move breaks open for us into the challenge of Marxism, where every “God-Man” is tarrying with his or her own heart-mind on the level of labour and the overcoming of necessary labour time. The aforementioned temporality of emancipatory politics comes closer to the forefront, as all of these levels must be thought together. Finally, we move into psychoanalysis, where every “God-Man” is tarrying with his or her own unconscious heart-mind on the level of unconscious desire (what do I really want?). Perhaps here we can fold all of these breakings into the breaking open of psychoanalysis itself into the social field, where the individual talking cure, must become the collective talking cure. Perhaps here we should think with Freud, who suggested at the very beginning of his work that such a movement of the talking cure from the private to the public, would become a necessity:84
“But above all, a place must be created in public opinion for the discussion of the problems of sexual life. It will have to become possible to talk about these things without being stamped as a trouble-maker or as a person who makes capital out of the lower instincts. And so here, too, there is enough work left to do for the next hundred years — in which our civilisation will have to learn to come to terms with the claims of our sexuality.”
Again, while the Peterson moment, certainly forced these problems of sexual life to center stage, we have yet to find the proper public response to them. Such a response must certainly function from the level of men’s and women’s work, but then gradually build up its energies through “collective healing” (perhaps a “creative concept”), capable of approaching what both men’s and women’s work. This work necessarily leads towards, in the formation of families, communities, and civil societies: the theopolitical; and in our context: the question of the state and capital.
This July 2025, The Portal will be hosting Matthew Green of
and of for a month long investigation inspired by their men’s work project “The Resonant Man”. If you want to sign up for the month, the easiest way to get involved, is to register directly through The Resonant Man itself. You can find all details at the link below:The schedule for the four events we will be hosting can be found below:
If you are interested in participating through The Portal directly, the easiest way is to either become a member of The Portal, or register for “Summer at The Portal 2025”, which will give you access to the four events with The Resonant Man, plus four events focused on the Philosophy of Theology with Dylan Shaul, as well as two events with
’s new “” circle at The Portal. You can find links to both The Portal and “Summer at The Portal 2025” below:See: Last, C. 2025. Thought Foundations: Global Mind. In: Real Speculations: Thought Foundations, Drive Myths, Social Analysis. Philosophy Portal Books. p. 39-300.
Of course, a few other notable names come to mind, e.g. Nietzsche and Heidegger at the top of the list.
Hegel, G.W.F. 1977. Phenomenology of Spirit. Oxford University Press. p. 3.
Ibid. p. 2.
Slavoj Žižek: "I'm generally opposed to wisdom". Det Kgl. Bibliotek. (link). (accessed: June 26 2025).
Hegel, G.W.F. 2001. Philosophy of Right. Batoche Books. p. 19.
Perhaps the same goes for the relationship between Hegel and Luther, regarding thought of the Protestant reformation.
Deleuze, G. & Guattari, F. 1991. What Is Philosophy? Columbia University Press.
Ibid. p. vii.
Marx, K. 1844. Critique of the Philosophy of Right. p. 6.
For further thoughts in this direction, see: Taek-Gwang Lee, A. 2025. Communism After Deleuze. Bloomsbury.
Deleuze, G. & Guattari, F. 1991. What Is Philosophy? Columbia University Press. p. 35.
Ibid. p. 61.
Most notably, see: Last, C. 2020. Chapter 9: Atechnogenesis and Technocultural Evolution. In: Global Brain Singularity: Universal History, Future Evolution, and Humanity’s Dialectical Horizon. Springer. p. 165-188.
See: Philosophy Portal.
I see my doctoral thesis as simply attempting to “apprehend one’s time in thought”, see: Last, C. 2020. Global Brain Singularity: Universal History, Future Evolution, and Humanity’s Dialectical Horizon. Springer.
An initiative pioneered by
and , see: The Resonant Man. For the retreat itself, see: The Resonant Man Summer Weekend.2015 Maps of Meaning Lecture 01a: Introduction (Part 1). Jordan B. Peterson. (link) (accessed: June 28 2025).
See, e.g.: Jordan Peterson debate on the gender pay gap, campus protests and postmodernism. Channel 4 News. (link) (accessed: June 28 2025).
2017/06/28: Postmodern NeoMarxism: Diagnosis and Cure. Jordan B Peterson. (link) (accessed: June 27 2025).
Lecture: Biblical Series I: Introduction to the Idea of God. Jordan B Peterson. (link) (accessed: June 27 2025).
It is perhaps no big surprise, that what we find today downstream of the Peterson phenomenon, as the basis of a new counter-culture, is perhaps an attempt to iron man this notion: “white Western Christian patriarchy”.
Girard, R. 1987. Things Hidden from the Foundations of the World. Stanford University Press.
Skrimshire, S. 2014. Climate change and apocalyptic faith. Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Climate Change 5(2). p. 233-246.
Geraci, R.M. 2010. Apocalyptic AI: Visions of heaven in robotics, artificial intelligence, and virtual reality. Oxford University Press.
See again: Lecture: Biblical Series I: Introduction to the Idea of God. Jordan B Peterson. (link) (accessed: June 27 2025).
Which reflects the messaging of Peterson’s latest book, see: Peterson, J. 2025. We Who Wrestle With God: Perceptions of the Divine. Allen Lane.
These questions even seem to haunt conversations that New Atheist Richard Dawkins finds himself in, see: Richard Dawkins vs Ayaan Hirsi Ali: The God Debate. Unherd. (link) (accessed: June 28 2025).
See for example Peterson’s recent performance at the Oxford Union where he responds to a question about whether he had ever made an intellectual mistake with the idea that his greatest mistake had been aligning with socialism as a 14 year old, see: Jordan Peterson on wokeism in public life, cultural Christianity and the trans debate. OxfordUnion. (link) (accessed: June 28 2025).
Clearly on display in both figures like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, who seem to treat politics like a playground for global corporatists.
See: Cutrone, C. 2023. Death of the Millennial Left: Interventions 2006-2022. Sublation Media.
Culminating in works like, see: Critique of the Critique of the Philosophy of Right.
Žižek, S. 2024. Christian Atheism: How to be a Real Materialist. Bloomsbury. p. 7.
Of course, this may seem itself a contradiction considering that Woke politics is usually stereotyped as “identity politics”. In fact, and as I will explore, this form of Leftist politics can only exist on the basis of a total forgetting of its own historical foundations in dialectical logic.
You can find the history of my tarrying with this object here, see: Marxism as a Signifier.
See: Cutrone, C. 2024. Marxism and Politics: Essays on Critical Theory and the Party 2006-2024. Sublation Press.
This is one of the drives of the Philosophy Portal course this year, see: Early Marx 101.
Cutrone, C. 2024. Marxism and Politics: Essays on Critical Theory and the Party 2006-2024. Sublation Press. p. 21.
Ibid. p. ix.
Also one of the reasons I gravitated towards the work of Alenka Zupančič, see: Zupančič, A. 2017. What Is Sex? MIT Press.
See: Kevin Orosz.
See: Daniel Dick.
Ibid. p. 15.
Ibid. p. 35.
Ibid. p. 57.
Ibid. p. 83.
Ibid. p. 109.
Ibid. p. 133.
Ibid. p. 155.
Ibid. p. 177.
Ibid. p. 199.
Ibid. p. 223.
Resulting in: Last, C. 2020. Global Brain Singularity: Universal History, Future Evolution, and Humanity’s Dialectical Horizon. Springer.
Resulting in the eventual publication of: Last, C. 2023. Systems and Subjects: Thinking the Foundations of Science and Philosophy. Philosophy Portal Books.
In a way, we could think about this loop as the ground of Systems and Subjects, see: Last, C. 2023. Systems and Subjects: Thinking the Foundations of Science and Philosophy. Philosophy Portal Books.
Not to be confused with Jordan B. Peterson’s Intellectual Dark Web.
See: Maniphesto.
See again: Communisation in Absolute Capitalism.
This is one of the challenges of the Christian Atheism course, see: Christian Atheism.
See: Philosophy Portal.
See: The Portal.
See: Peter Rollins.
See: Thomas Hübl.
This could be due to the collapse of “ego-ideals” and the hegemony of a perverse “super-ego”, as was intimated by
in his recent discussion with Michael Downs a.k.a on the Cast, see: “Mikey in the Mittle”. In private dialogue with Mittelstaedt, I have suggested that the reconstruction of ego-ideals might require us to think from the base/ground of sexual difference in something like men’s (and women’s work), in order to re-approach long-term relationality towards familial construction, which then in turn can function as the base of community construction. Without this work, we will perhaps “drown” in the “narcissistic sea” of “obscene masters” who exploit the perverse nature of our contemporary superego.This tension and problem is at work in this article, see again: Critique of the Critique of the Philosophy of Right.
I discuss this at length with Jacob Kishere here, see: The Resonant Man (w/ Jacob Kishere).
See again: Communisation in Absolute Capitalism.
Mladen Dolar suggests that this idea of alien otherness within and without is another key dimension of the Ljubljana School’s response to the Frankfurt School, see again: Pre-History of the Ljubljana School.
See: Dive into the Philosophy of The Resonant Man; see also: Summer in The Portal 2025.
Freud, S. 1898a. Sexuality in the Aetiology of the Neuroses. In: Freud — Complete Works. p. 470.
I'm so sick of the Frankfurt school. Bleep blop. Blerp. Click click bleg bless bleb