PhD, Political Science, University of Toronto · Political theory & international relations · Collaborative degree in Jewish Studies
You bring a text, a thinker, a question, or a difficulty. We build a reading path around it. Then we meet regularly over weeks or months to work through the material together.
Sessions are 60 minutes by video. Most students meet weekly or biweekly. The work is personalized: a reader returning to Plato after twenty years needs something different from a founder thinking about power, a student wrestling with Strauss, or an independent scholar trying to finally read Heidegger seriously.
The point is not to collect summaries. It is to learn how to read, interpret, and think with books that repay serious attention.
What a session actually looks like: a recent hour began with Schmitt’s friend–enemy distinction and, following the student’s own questions, worked through Aristotle on the household, Plato’s Laws on the two mothers of all regimes, Derrida’s Politics of Friendship, and the Weimar crisis that produced Schmitt, Strauss, and Heidegger at once. No curriculum ordered that path — the student’s reading did.
One 60-minute session. Best for an initial conversation, a specific passage, or deciding whether longer study makes sense.
Five 60-minute sessions, scheduled at your pace. The right fit for most students: enough time to make progress on a text, thinker, or theme.
Ten 60-minute sessions for students who want a more complete arc: a book, a major thinker, or a structured path through a philosophical problem.
PRIVATE STUDY IS FOR READING, FORMATION, INTERPRETATION, AND INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT. FOR INSTITUTIONAL QUESTIONS OR APPLIED ADVISORY WORK WITH SPECIFIC STAKES, SEE MILLERMAN INTELLIGENCE. FOR GROUPS, SALONS, FIRMS, OR EVENTS, REQUEST A PRIVATE SEMINAR.
Plato, Aristotle, political rule, regime types, virtue, justice, and the philosophical life.
Nietzsche, Heidegger, technology, nihilism, liberalism, and the spiritual condition of modernity.
Strauss, Schmitt, Dugin, sovereignty, ideology, geopolitics, and the hidden assumptions behind public life.
"Michael's enthusiasm for the real-world import of philosophy is immediately palpable, and his command of a wide range of material, and fluency expressing it, is rare... An absolutely excellent teacher."
"One of the major things I got out of the course was learning how to read these books in a way that you understand and see more than you would have on your own."
This is close reading and serious conversation with Millerman, scheduled around your life, focused on texts and questions that repay sustained attention. It's not a credentialed program. It's not therapy (although philosophizing together can be therapeutic!) You can think of it as having a mature study partner.
Prefer to study independently? Get lifetime access to the complete Millerman School archive: 20+ courses and hundreds of hours of lectures.
Hosting a salon, firm, institution, private club, investor circle, conference, or serious local group? Request Michael for a private seminar.
Write a short note about what you want to read, what you want to understand, or where you're getting stuck.
"If you're not sure whether this is for you, write anyway and say so. The first conversation is where we figure that out."
No forms here. Write a normal email — your name, what you want to read or work through, and anything else on your mind. Michael reads and answers these personally.
WRITE TO MICHAEL →MILLERMANMICHAEL@GMAIL.COM — OPENS YOUR MAIL APP, OR JUST COPY THE ADDRESS.