Announcing the Commonplace Philosophy Reading Grant

Some free subscriptions for those with financial burdens.

Apologies for two posts in one morning. I should have sent this out yesterday.

St Jerome as Scholar

I charge $8/month here on Commonplace Philosophy. The reasons for that aren’t very interesting – it is what Substack suggests, for one – but sometimes people ask me about it. As a public writer who doesn’t have institutional affiliation, you have to charge for your work (and decide how much to charge) in order to survive. Writers employed by publications or universities don’t have to worry about that.

But there is a downside: when you paywall any of your content, you are necessarily excluding people.

Now, to be clear, I think some exclusion is good, but you want to exclusive for the right reasons. I want people who are genuinely interested, for example, to read the extra essays, leave comments on those essays, and join the members-only Zoom calls. Some barriers to entry help ensure that.

However, it means that you also exclude people who can’t pay. Students who don’t have jobs and need to pinch pennies can’t subscribe; those in countries with lower annual wages have to think about the purchase much more than those of us in the United States; people going through medical catastrophes might need to cancel all unnecessary expenses for a time. That’s not the kind of exclusion I like.

I can’t solve this problem completely, but I can do something about it. Today marks my first attempt.

At the bottom of this post is a link to a Google Form. If you have wanted to subscribe to this newsletter before but could not afford to do so, or have had to cancel your subscription due to financial hardship, fill that out. I’ll filter the responses based on some very minimal criteria, and then I will randomly select 25 people to receive a free one-year subscription to Commonplace Philosophy. This means you’ll have access to every post on the newsletter and can join the members-only Zoom calls during our read-alongs.

The deadline for responding to the form is this Friday. Once it is 12:01AM Saturday in Austin, I won’t accept any more submissions.

I’ll have the subscription become active on November 25, when our read-along of Hannah Arendt’s The Human Condition begins.

There are only four questions; you don’t need to spend more than 5 minutes on the form. I do ask you to explain your situation in just a few sentences, but you don’t have to explain all of your finances to me.

A couple of notes:

• This is run on the honor system. I can’t verify anyone’s financial status. If you lie on this form, you are robbing someone else of a subscription. That would be a dishonorable act.

• Winners will find out that they’ve won when they get a notification email from Substack. I won’t be emailing anyone directly about this. Don’t fall for scams, which are all too common online.

• I’m considering doing this annually based on how this turns out; this year is a trial run.

• Assuming that I do this next year, I’ll increase the number of free subscriptions I give away in proportion to the newsletter’s growth. Those of you who pay for a subscription can thus know that, in some small and indirect way, you are helping give away these subscriptions as well.

Here is the form. Remember: the deadline is Friday.