The Crito
The Becoming Human Project is flourishing, thanks to all of you!
The Plato Project now has new confirmed guests, including Armand D’Angour, Professor of Classics at Oxford University, the person who has reintroduced active language learning at Jesus College, Oxford. D’Angour fluently speaks Ancient Greek and Latin, and is an accomplished musician and scholar of music, who has rediscovered how Ancient Greek music sounded. You can learn more in this amazing video about his discovery, with over a million views. I’m thrilled to be talking to him, and look forward to sharing that with you in the next month or two.
I am editing my interview with the great scholar of the Syrian Neoplatonist, Iamblichus, Gregory Shaw, Professor of Religious Studies at Stonehill College, which was a thrilling explanation of what Platonism, according to Shaw, offers us today. He says it gives us the spiritual depth people want in mysticism with the rational skepticism and scrutiny we need from science.
I’m also editing my interview with the world’s leading scholar of John the Baptist, James McGrath, a New Testament expert at Butler University and the author of 7 books on the New Testament and Early Christianity. In addition to these completed or scheduled conversations, I have an exciting new confirmed guest: a former Navy Seal, who has recently joined the Plato Project and Becoming Human, and I will share his insights on how philosophy and the life of learning have shaped him and guide his work today.
I’m also thrilled to share two new publications and make a very special acknowledgment of gratitude.
First, this week’s Plato Project episode, “The Prison Escape Plan that Changed the World: Socrates, Crito, and the Power of Piety.” As I explain in the episode, the Crito literally changed my life, and I hope it changes you, too. It’s why Becoming Human and the Plato Project exist.
I want to thank all of my paid subscribers, and especially my founding investor and supporter, Aliman Sears. Aliman has been with me from the beginning, supporting my work generously, and I could not be doing this without him. I am currently working to raise funds to cover all of the substantial costs you can imagine go into the interview, editing, study, and prep for this work. I want thank Aliman for being the first investor to make this new stage possible.
If you’d like to join him, you can help in two ways.
The Plato Project has a support page outlining the basic costs of the Plato work, which a little less than a new SUV. That’s not pricing my value as a teacher, just how much I have I have put into it, and my conservatively estimated “opportunity costs.”
When I do free work for the public, I’m not working with a paid client. I won’t pretend this has not led to challenges, but I’m in good company, and I could not do the work I do had not many teachers, starting with my parents, Mark and Teana Loncar, not shared their time sacrificially with me. So I’m glad to do it. But if you want to help my free public work, especially in a big way, I’m working to raise 15-25k to make the next few months of the Plato Project smoother. The more money I can invest in Becoming Human, the more I can give you all and the world.
The second announcement is a special Marginalia issue, covering some of our cutting edge work on history and religion, especially Jewish Christian relations.
It provides an overview of our organization, and what some of our current funding priorities are. So if you want a tax write-off, and would rather support the nonprofit side of my work, please do so! I’m honored to serve the public in so many ways, but they all involve bringing great scholars, great artists, great human beings, to everyone. Making valuable resources and thinkers free to the public is expensive, so those of you who support Becoming Human, or Marginalia (and some do both, thank you again, Aliman!), are true tax-payers in the Republic of Letters. Thank you! And thank you, all of my subscribers and readers, for sharing in this work. Even if you aren’t a paying subscriber yet, I’m delighted to share my work with you. You can support me by liking this post and sharing it and my work. My blessings to you all, and stay tuned for exciting updates on Hegel, Augustine, and Iris Murdoch, coming soon!