Metaphysics and media: Walter J. Ong’s philosophical milieu

Abstract

ABSTRACTWhile having a solid foundation in philosophy, Walter J. Ong did not identify with any philosophical school or movement, preferring to interpret philosophy simply as love of wisdom, which is best pursued not by logic and treatise, but by rhetoric and conversation. Beginning during his formative years at Saint Louis University in the 1940s, he integrated metaphysics and communication, suggesting that the focus of philosophy should be not on the idea but on being. It is within these perspectives that Ong probed issues that later became identified with media ecology. Thomism provided a “furniture of mind” to weigh post-Hegelian dialectic and to probe the implications of existentialistic dialogue (Jaspers, Camus-Sartre, Marcel); to phenomenologically explore personalist interiority and encounter (Lavelle, Buber, Hopkins); to interpret human thought within the context of cosmic time and evolution (Teilhard); to consider speech philosophy as an alternative to Ramist and Cartesian methodology (Rosenstock-Huessy); and to promulgate an oral hermeneutic that contextualizes concept within being (Bakhtin, Rosenstock-Huessy). The argument of this essay is supported by substantial quotation of previously unpublished materials from the Walter J. Ong archival collection at Saint Louis University.