In Defense of Walter J. Ong's Philosophical Thought: Against Timothy Mark Chouinard's Critique

Abstract

In my 7,300-word review essay "In Defense of Walter J. Ong's Philosophical Thought: Against Timothy Mark Chouinard's Critique," I first thoroughly elaborate how the American Jesuit Renaissance specialist and cultural historian Walter J. Ong (1912-2003; Ph.D. in English, Harvard University, 1955) of Saint Louis University developed his philosophical thought about visualist cognitive processing -- and how he never tired of referring to Eric A. Havelock's book Preface to Plato. Next, I turn to Timothy Mark Chouinard's succinctly stated critique of Havelock and Ong in his Ph.D. dissertation in English at Saint Louis University titled T. S. Eliot: A Philosophy of Communication for Literature and Speech. Because Chouinard also explicitly refers to the thought of the Canadian Jesuit philosopher and theologian Bernard Lonergan (1904-1984), I also bring Lonergan's thought into play in responding to Chouinard.