Becoming Human
Becoming Human Project
Becoming Human is born from a new story of the human that I am seeking to live and share with others. The project brings my original research, lectures, and conversations with scientists, artists, thinkers, and writers to the widest possible audience through my YouTube, Substack, and podcast, Becoming Human: A Show for a Species in Transition.
The Becoming Human Project offers three annual memberships:
Wayfinder
$10/month
Epicurean Delights
$100/month
Friends of Philosophy
$500/month
Human nature is under construction.
Existence is a work of art we have to fashion for ourselves.
Please handle your humanity with care.
Contents are valuable.
Thank you for taking agency over your existence.
Membership Options
Wayfinder Membership
$10/month
paid Substack Subcription ($84 value)
immediate access to “How We Eat and Why It Matters: A Philosophy of Food” ($375 value)
member-only pricing on all live courses at the Becoming Human Academy
$459 value
How We Eat and Why It Matters: A Philosophy of Food
“The world begins at a kitchen table,” writes Muscogee (Creek) poet Joy Harjo, “No matter what, we must eat to live.” Harjo, former Poet Laureate, knows we come to the table for renewal and joy. We find ourselves made new by a hot bowl of soup, a fresh cookie, and the comfort of finding ourselves in a familiar ritual. We are nourished. We find life.
Inspired by a live Q and A, this audio course explores in three episodes the power of the everyday act of eating to reveal and transform the meaning of life.
In these episodes, you will learn more about how eating a meal is a source of ethical insight, why eating and ecology are intimately linked, and how a philosophy of food as communion can deepen our understanding and joy.
Course value: $375
Epicurean Delights Membership
$100/month
paid Substack Subcription ($84 value)
immediate access to five Becoming Human Academy audio courses ($2,652 value)
pays for your first Becoming Human Academy live course ($350 value)
member-only pricing on all subsequent courses
$3,059 value
JOIN NOW
How We Eat and Why It Matters: A Philosophy of Food
“The world begins at a kitchen table,” writes Muscogee (Creek) poet Joy Harjo, “No matter what, we must eat to live.” Harjo, former Poet Laureate, knows we come to the table for renewal and joy. We find ourselves made new by a hot bowl of soup, a fresh cookie, and the comfort of finding ourselves in a familiar ritual. We are nourished. We find life.
Inspired by a live Q and A (video below), this audio course explores in three episodes the power of the everyday act of eating to reveal and transform the meaning of life.
In these episodes, you will learn more about how eating a meal is a source of ethical insight, why eating and ecology are intimately linked, and how a philosophy of food as communion can deepen our understanding and joy.
Course value: $375
Plato’s Allegory of The Cave: Introduction to Epistemology
Plato’s "Allegory of The Cave" is the most famous story in Western philosophy.
This 3-lecture course shows how Plato’s allegory gives us insight into how the world is an illusion, how it is real, and how to know the difference. Developing a critical social epistemology, the course connects Plato's teaching to modern marketing, psychological operations, conspiracy theories, and mass deception.
It offers a concise introduction to Plato’s metaphysics and epistemology, while revealing the essential spiritual dimension of philosophy as a practice of liberation, presenting the essentials of Loncar's approach to epistemology as a form of applied philosophy.
This course is a prerequisite for the forthcoming live course “Psy Ops: Psychological Warfare as a Global Epistemic Regime.”
Course value: $375
The World, the Soul, and the Gods: Introduction to Philosophy
This 3-lecture “crash course” is a rich and concise introduction to cosmology, philosophical psychology, and theology.
This series explores how the soul is connected to the cosmos and how our view of the universe shapes our concept and care of the environment, offering my response to one of our most pressing concerns: How do we sustain the proper care of earth and our own species?
Course value: $375
Science, Sex, & Magic: Plato’s Symposium
Science, magic, and immortality all lead back to the same ancient god: Eros.
The history of revolutionary advances in humanity, the Holy Grail, and Ray Kurtweil's Singularity can all be traced back to a single myth, the Myth of Diotima, found in Plato's “Symposium”—the most literarily intricate of all Plato's dialogues.
Diotima, the mysterious wise woman from Mantinea, reveals to Socrates the secret of immortality. Central to that ancient mystery is Eros (Love).
This three episode series on the Symposium and the Myth of Diotima explores Socrates' integrated vision of Eros that unifies the sensuality of the bedroom, the most rarified delights of mathematical epiphany, and the experience of mystical enlightenment.
Course value: $375
Søren Kierkegaard: The Poet of Existence
Søren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher and religious thinker, created one of the most consequential bodies of writing in human history.
Kierkegaard is known as a delightful and difficult figure; like Socrates, he is ironic and hard to understand. One of the greatest literary writers, he is also widely regarded as the most important philosopher and theologian to create much of the 20th century: movements like existentialism, modern theology, and even forms of modern nihilism can be traced back to the work of Kierkegaard.
Often called the "Father of Existentialism," Kierkegaard is essential for understanding the rise of Existentialism, its nature, and why it has so deeply shaped our culture. Our culture has accepted Existentialism intellectually, but rejected it existentially.
Kierkegaard's theory of the three stages of life, the aesthetic, ethical, and religious offers profound insight into the existential realities of human life. This series explores the meaning of the religious phase by exhibiting existential ontology in relationship to sexual and erotic desire, consumer capitalism, and humans' habit of turning people, including themselves, into mere things. This series shows how Kierkegaard illuminates the meaning of our own time and shows us a path to becoming an individual: the poet of our own existence.
Course value: $1,125
Friends of Philosophy Membership
$500/month
paid Substack Subcription ($84 value)
immediate access to ALL five Epicurean Delights audio courses plus five more Becoming Human Academy audio courses ($17,777 value)
pays for three Becoming Human Academy live courses ($1,050 value)
eligible for BioPoetics Coaching
$18,827 value
JOIN NOW
Becoming Human: Origins
Becoming Human: Origins tells the story of how an atheistic revolution in philosophy, beginning with Socrates and Jesus, remade religion and science, and set the stage for our post-human age. It argues that the dominant story of reason, science, and religion is a modern myth, and must be replaced if we are to make real progress.
The series begins by showing Socrates was a revolutionary religious martyr and ends with the death of God and Reason, revealing the common connection between Protestant Christianity, the Enlightenment, Marxism, and Science. These movements are perceived as radically contradictory, but the source of their conflict is their common ancestry: they are all part of a single atheistic narrative—one that has never been told.
Course value: $2,575
The Modern Crisis of Choice & How to Find Personal Freedom
Choices are stressful because choice is not freedom. Yet their subtle difference eludes us, leaving us stressed and confused.
In this 3-lecture series, I share my understanding of the problem of freedom and offer you transformative insights, drawing on Aristotle, the Tao Te Ching, and Kierkegaard, that will help you move from choice to personal freedom, learning how to practice philosophy as a way of life.
Course value: $375
The Mystery of Existence
Haunted by Hamlet’s question, “To be or not to be,” humans wander the world oblivious to the meaning of their own existence. A century ago, in a period of global turmoil, crisis, and despair, Martin Heidegger published a revolutionary response to the question, what does it mean to be, creating the foundations of Existentialism and reshaping philosophy, atheism, and religion across the world. His book, Sein und Zeit, was first translated into English in 1962 as Being and Time.
Based on a decade of research at Yale University by the philosopher Samuel Loncar, Ph.D., this original interpretation of Sein und Zeit, using only the German text and his own translations, reveals for the first time that Heidegger’s work has been mistranslated and therefore misunderstood as Being and Time.
Heidegger’s essential idea of what it means to be was obscured by his own fraught employment of ideas from the history of theology, the immense intellectual challenge of explaining Heidegger’s ideas, whose origins he sought to conceal, and the difficulty of rendering them in English. From Being to Time to Existence and Time: An Interpretation of Sein und Zeit presents a fundamental reevaluation of Heidegger’s major work by returning to the original German and integrating the hidden frameworks that shaped Heidegger.
Drawing on recent scholarship and his own work in the history of philosophy, science, and religion, Samuel Loncar provides a clear analysis of the central ideas of the book, giving any engaged listener the tools to understand the text for themselves and gain deeper insight into their own existence.
At the heart of his argument is his solution to the book’s central, but rarely discussed, mystery: Why did Martin Heidegger define the human being in the same terms Thomas Aquinas used to describe God? In the end, we are led to a new vision of Heidegger, philosophy, theology, atheism, and our own existence.
Course value: $6,600
The Existential Englightenment
From the rationalism of the Enlightenment to the dark freedom of Existentialism, there is a hidden path, passing through the abyss of human depravity into a new, scientifically rigorous psychology of the human self.
Often attacked or celebrated for his supposed irrationalism and attack on the Enlightenment, Kierkegaard is in fact the truest inheritor of the Enlightenment’s core values, for he shows how a commitment to rigorous rationality and human progress must confront the paradoxical essence of human existence.
The struggle of Enlightenment humanism to face the problem of evil, particularly after the Lisbon Earthquake, led to the immense yet unstable achievements of Immanuel Kant, who recognized a defect in human’s relationship to their own rationality. Seeking to uphold the sovereignty of Reason while preserving the insights of religion and morality, the contested inheritance of the Kantian legacy gave birth to German Idealism.
Situating Kierkegaard in the context of the Enlightenment, German Idealism, and the abyssal anthropology of Martin Luther, this course offers a detailed historical and philosophical introduction to Kierkegaard’s core ideas. Combining historical rigor with a strong focus on the existential and contemporary relevance of Kierkegaard, it is an ideal introduction for new and experienced students of Kierkegaard. The Existential Enlightenment offers insight into the meaning of history, the fate of religion, and the role of despair in human liberation, showing how the project of Existentialism and the Enlightenment meet in the path of Søren Kierkegaard.
Course value: $5,575
“I’m a philosopher who teaches in the university, and I have been studying Heidegger for 30 years, and Dr. Loncar’s 12-lecture course has literally transformed my understanding of Sein und Zeit. This course is invaluable.
Thank you so much.”
Aliman Sears, Becoming Human Project Member
FAQs
-
Your membership is accessible through your personal log-in.
Memberships provide access to your membership resources and benefits for as long as you are a paying member.
-
Memberships are annual, and billied monthly. You will receive an email before it auto-renews each year.