In any event, because of the prominence of Francis Bacon in Dr. Eric McLuhan's essay "On Formal Cause" (see the "Index" for specific page references to Bacon [p. 157]), I should mention here that Marshall McLuhan served as the director of the American Jesuit Renaissance specialist and art historian Maurice B. McNamee's unpublished 1945 doctoral dissertation in English at Saint Louis University, Francis Bacon's Attitude toward Grammar and Rhetoric in the Light of Tradition. Subsequently, McNamee (1909-2007) published the lengthy article "Literary Decorum in Francis Bacon" in Saint Louis University Studies, Series A, 1(3) (March 1950): pp. 1-52. Then the American Jesuit Renaissance specialist and media theorist Walter J. Ong (1912-2003; Ph.D. in English, Harvard University, 1955) discusses in his 1967 book The Presence of the Word: Some Prolegomena for Cultural and Religious History (Yale University Press, p. 237), the expanded version of his 1964 Terry Lectures at Yale University. When young Marshall McLuhan taught English at Saint Louis University (1937-1944), both young Walter Ong and young Maurice McNamee studied under him there.
In Dr. Eric McLuhan's essay "On Formal Cause," he discusses the verbal arts of grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic (or logic) throughout the essay. But I want to focus here on the following sentences:
Grammar has its roots in the logos spermatikos, the seeds of things and words and their formal structures. (Hence Grammar's two main areas of activity: etymology and interpretation of texts.) Dialectic, on the other hand, grows out of the logos hendiathetos, the unspoken 'word' in the mind, the thought process abstracted from utterance and from the hearer. The silent word. Rhetoric derives from the logos prophorikos, the uttered word that goes forth to transform the hearer. A Dialectician seeks to change your mind, to convince you; a Rhetorician, rather, aims to change you, to modify how you think rather than what you think. (pp. 125-126)
No doubt this contrast between a Rhetorician and a Dialectician is a bold one. No doubt the ancient Hebrew prophets spoke as mouthpieces for God so that their uttered words would go forth to transform the hearers. So by Dr. Eric McLuhan's words here, those prophets were Rhetoricians, not Dialecticians.
However, Aristotle is credited with being the founding father of the formal study of logic (also known as dialectic). For a discussion of the broader ancient Greek cultural context out of which Aristotle's formal study of logic emerged historically, see G. E. R. Lloyd's classic study Polarity and Analogy: Two Types of Argumentation in Early Greek Thought (1966).
Simply stated, the formal study of logic is the breeding grounds for a Dialectician, as Dr. Eric McLuhan here characterizes a Dialectician. But the formal study of logic emerged historically in ancient Greek culture after phonetic alphabetic writing emerged there. The implication is that the formal study of logic did not emerge in pre-literate cultures (in Ong's terminology, in primary oral cultures). But that seems to imply that a Dialectician as Dr. Eric McLuhan here characterizes a Dialectician did not emerge in primary oral cultures. In short, in primary oral cultures, no Dialectician emerged to seek "to change your mind, to convince you" about something. Thus, in primary oral cultures, all speakers tend, or tended as the case may be, to aim "to change you, to modify how you think rather than what you think." (Yes, to be sure, I am here using the disjunctive logic of a Dialectician.)
But let's switch our frame of reference to TV. If we focus on the content of TV, then we are, by analogy, focusing on what we as viewers think. Thus, we see TV as analogous to a Dialectician as Dr. Eric McLuhan here characterizes a Dialectician. However, when we see TV as analogous to a Rhetorician, instead, we see TV as modifying how we think, not what we think.
But let me try another analogy here. Ong borrows the French Catholic playwright and existentialist philosopher Gabriel Marcel's distinction between belief "in" (a person) and belief "that" (a proposition is true) in Ong's frequently reprinted essay "Voice as Summons for Belief: Literature, Faith, and the Divided Self" in the now-defunct Jesuit-sponsored journal Thought: A Review of Culture and Idea (Fordham University), 33(Serial number 128), (Spring 1958): pp. 43-61.
Now, according to Dr. Eric McLuhan's characterization of a Dialectician, a Dialectician concentrates on formulating propositions that are true - emphasizing what Ong and Marcel refer to as belief "that." According to Dr. Eric McLuhan's characterization of a Rhetorician aiming to modify how we think, not what we think, the Rhetorician concentrates on belief "in" (a person - namely the Rhetorician himself or herself). But would belief "in" the Rhetorician contribute to what Dr. Eric McLuhan describes as modifying how we think, not what we think in terms of propositional statements? Perhaps the analogy does not fully fit what he says, even though belief "that" a proposition is true fits what he says about a Dialectician.
But this brings us to Dr. Eric McLuhan himself and to Marshall McLuhan. Is each of them in his own way and to the best of his ability, aiming to be a Grammarian or a Rhetorician or a Dialectician - or some combination of these three personas (as Dr. Eric McLuhan has characterized each of these)?
To go back to the simple schema that Ong and Marcel work with, it strikes me that the whole person usually works with a certain combination of belief "in" (a person) and belief "that" (a proposition is true). Ah, but what about the professional philosopher (a Dialectician)? Doesn't he or she emphasize belief "that" (a proposition is true) in expounding his or her philosophical position? Sure. However, if I understand Ong (1958b) aright, the ineluctable modality of the human voice of the professional philosopher (a Dialectician) is itself a summons for belief "in" him or her as a person.
Similarly, both the voice of Dr. Eric McLuhan and of Marshall McLuhan summons belief "in" each of them as a person (a Rhetorician and a Grammarian, who occasionally also sounds like he is aiming not just to change who we are, but to also change what we think in terms of propositions).
Now, in the "Preface" to Ong's 1977 book Interfaces of the Word: Studies in the Evolution of Consciousness and Culture (Cornell University Press, pp. 9-13), he explicitly formulates his so-called relationist technology thesis in carefully nuanced sentences (pp. 9-10). In it, he says the following in the first sentence: "The present volume carries forward work in two earlier volumes by the same author, The Presence of the Word (1967) and Rhetoric Romance, and Technology (1971)." He then discusses these two earlier volumes.
Then Ong says, "The thesis of these two earlier works is sweeping, but it is not reductionist, as reviewers and commentators, so far as I know, have all generously recognized: the works do not maintain that the evolution from primary orality through writing and print to an electronic culture, which produces secondary orality, causes or explain everything in human culture and consciousness. Rather, the thesis is relationist: major developments, and very likely even all major developments, in culture and consciousness are related, often in unexpected intimacy, to the evolution of the word from primary orality to its present state. But the relationships are varied and complex, with cause and effect [i.e., efficient causality?] often difficult to distinguish" (pp. 9-10).
Thus, Ong himself claims (1) that his thesis is "sweeping" but (2) that the shifts do not "cause or explain everything in human culture and consciousness" and (3) that the shifts are related to "major developments, and very likely even all major developments, in culture and consciousness."
Major cultural developments include the rise of modern science, the rise of modern capitalism, the rise of representative democracy, the rise of the Industrial Revolution, and the rise of the Romantic Movement in philosophy, literature, and the arts.
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