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Thomas James Farrell is professor emeritus of writing studies at the University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD). He started teaching at UMD in Fall 1987, and he retired from UMD at the end of May 2009. He was born in 1944. He holds three degrees from Saint Louis University (SLU): B.A. in English, 1966; M.A.(T) in English 1968; Ph.D.in higher education, 1974. On May 16, 1969, the editors of the SLU student newspaper named him Man of the Year, an honor customarily conferred on an administrator or a faculty member, not on a graduate student -- nor on a woman up to that time. He is the proud author of the book WALTER ONG'S CONTRIBUTIONS TO CULTURAL STUDIES: THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE WORD AND I-THOU COMMUNICATION (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2000; 2nd ed. 2009, forthcoming). The first edition won the 2001 Marshall McLuhan Award for Outstanding Book in the Field of Media Ecology conferred by the Media Ecology Association. For further information about his education and his publications, see his UMD homepage: Click here to visit Dr. Farrell's homepage.
On September 10 and 22, 2009, he discussed Walter Ong's work on the blog radio talk show "Ethics Talk" that is hosted by Hope May in philosophy at Central Michigan University. Each hour-long show has been archived and is available for people who missed the live broadcast to listen to. Here are the website addresses for the two archived shows:
Click here to listen the Technologizing of the Word Interview
Click here to listen the Ramus, Method & The Decay of Dialogue Interview
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Friday, January 3, 2020Diagnosing Our Contemporary American Mental Health Lee Siegel's op-ed "Why Is America So Depressed?" in the New York Times (dated January 2, 2020) sums up bleak psychiatric reports about the mental health of contemporary Americans. But Siegel's claims in one particular sentence suggest to me that a deeper cultural diagnosis of the mental health of contemporary Americans is called for. This deeper cultural diagnosis is provided by Walter J. Ong's thought about Western culture.
Tuesday, December 31, 2019Looking Back and Looking Ahead When I look back on my OEN articles in 2019, I note that I frequently wrote about Pope Francis and about President Donald J. Trump -- usually in separate articles, but once I wrote about each man's charisma style in the same article. When I look back over the decade of the 2010s, during which I wrote most of my 400 OEN articles, the election of Pope Francis in 2013 and the election of President Trump in 2016 stand out.
Monday, December 23, 2019Culturally Contextualizing the Gospels (REVIEW ESSAY) In Pope Francis' 2013 apostolic exhortation, he claims that the gospel message is trans-cultural (paragraph 117). But M. David Litwa culturally contextualizes the canonical gospels in the ancient Mediterranean thought-world in his accessible new book from Yale University Press -- as have the biblical scholars Dennis R. Macdonald and Werner H. Kelber, among others. I will argue that the pope's claim may not be entirely true.
Wednesday, December 11, 2019Operationally defining and explaining deification for Americans today (REVIEW ESSAY) M. David Litwa in religious studies at the Australian Catholic University in Melbourne has massively researched the ancient imagery and verbal expressions involving deification in four scholarly books. But I undertake to operationally define and explain deification for Americans today as a psycho-spiritual process of growth and development that involves learning how to access the optimal forms of the archetypes of maturity.
Monday, November 25, 2019Harold Bloom on the American Religion of Self-Reliance (REVIEW ESSAY) The late literary critic Harold Bloom claims that the American religion of self-reliance is "a superb literary religion." By "literary," he means primarily works of imaginative literature, but also artful verbal statements, including the artful written and oral statements of Pope Francis. The pope urges people to engage in encounter and dialogue, in which they also could practice the American religion of self-reliance.
Tuesday, November 5, 2019Jordan Peterson's Critiques of Political-Correctness Zealotry (REVIEW ESSAY) In my estimate, political-correctness zealotry is an intellectual and psycho-spiritual cancer. Basically, I admire Professor Jordan Peterson for his courage in his public critiques of political-correctness zealotry. But I do not accept his critique of climate change, and I am wary of his scapegoating of Yale's English Department. The new documentary film "The Rise of Jordan Peterson" prompts me to reply to him and his thought.
Wednesday, October 16, 2019Harold Bloom Lived a Long and Productive Life! Yale's prolific literary critic Harold Bloom died on Monday, October 14, 2019, at a hospital in New Haven at the age of 89. May he rest in peace. He lived a long and remarkably productive life, and his perceptive comments in his 1989 book and his 2005 book contributed salient information to my 2012 article that was, in part, about him and his perceptive comments.
Sunday, October 13, 2019Fliting Is the Name of the Game: The Philistine Trump and the Biblical Goliath's Boasts and Insults In sports commentary, the biblical story of David and Goliath has been reduced to the proverbial expression "David versus Goliath" to describe an underdog going against a much stronger opponent. But I want to call attention to the verbal pattern known as fliting in the Philistine Goliath's boasts and insults. In modern English, Trump is a philistine who also uses boasts and insults. But fliting is culturally regressive today.
Thursday, October 10, 2019The Road Not Taken by Pope Francis (REVIEW ESSAY) Unfortunately, the American Jesuit Walter J. Ong's perceptive work represents for most of his fellow Roman Catholics, including Pope Francis, the road not taken. Rather than studying Ong's work about Western cultural history, the Italo-Argentine future pope studied the Italo-German Italo-German priest and theologian Romano Guardini's work about Western cultural history. But Ong's account is more comprehensive and nuanced.
Sunday, September 29, 2019Pope Francis' 2013 Apostolic Exhortation Is Coherent -- and Beautiful! (REVIEW ESSAY) In the first year of his pontificate, Pope Francis issued an apostolic exhortation on November 24, 2013, in which he discusses themes that have been met with resistance by certain conservative American Catholics. Recently I decided to read this somewhat lengthy document and see how he went about making his case. He is a seasoned preachy guy. I don't agree with everything he says. But it is a coherent document -- and beautiful!
Monday, September 23, 2019Some Reflections on Pope Francis' Address on Evangelization The Pontifical Council for Promoting New Evangelization organized an international meeting for Academic Centres, Movements and Associations of New Evangelization at the Vatican on September 19-21, 2019. The culminating event was an audience with Pope Francis, at which he delivered a prepared address. I want to highlight his substantial address and offer some reflections about it.
Saturday, September 14, 2019Here's How to Understand Trump and His Supporters: Part II (REVIEW ESSAY) On September 4, 2019, I posted my OEN review essay "Here's How to Understand Trump and His Supporters." Then James Poniewozik's informative new book about Trump and his supporters came out. Consequently, in "How to Understand Trump and His Supporters: Part II," I now undertake to expand my previous discussion and to incorporate certain new points about Trump and his supporters from Poniewozik's admirably lucid new book
Saturday, September 7, 2019The Different Charisma Styles of Pope Francis and President Trump Pope Francis exemplifies kindness charisma, and President Trump, authority charisma, as Olivia Fox Cabane operationally defines and explains these two charisma styles in her 2012 book The Charisma Myth. Now, when a French journalist recently gave the pope a copy of his new book about how certain American Catholics attack him, the pope said that he is "honored that the Americans attack me." Can you imagine Trump saying this?
Wednesday, September 4, 2019Here's How to Understand Trump and His Supporters (REVIEW ESSAY) How should we understand Trump's charisma with his most ardent supporters? Olivia Fox Cabane's 2012 book The Charisma Myth: How Anyone Can Master the Art and Science of Personal Magnetism (Porfolio/ Penguin) provides a useful account of charisma and how it works. Her four charisma styles are related to Robert L. Moore's account of the kinds of archetypes of maturity in the human psyche.
Friday, August 30, 2019Pope Francis = "Open Closure"; But Catholic Traditionalists = Closed-Systems Thought When Pope Francis was the archbishop of Buenos Aires, he engaged in religious dialogues with Rabbi Abraham Skorka that have been published in English as the book On Heaven and Earth. In the new book When Bishops Meet: An Essay Comparing Trent, Vatican I, and Vatican II, the church historian John W. O'Malley says, "Never before in the entire annals of Christian history had a Catholic prelate ever engaged in such an encounter."
Saturday, August 24, 2019"Substantialism" in Past Thinking about the Church (REVIEW ESSAY) The American Jesuit church historian John W. O'Malley has just published a new book, When Bishops Meet: An Essay Comparing Trent, Vatican I, and Vatican II. It is a follow up to his three books about the Council of Trent, the First Vatican Council, and the Second Vatican Council. In his new book he describes past thinking about the church as involving "substantialism" (Collingwood's terminology), which Vatican II abandoned.
Sunday, August 11, 2019Ross Douthat Says Toni Morrison May Be the Last Great American Novelist The African American novelist Toni Morrison died on August 5, 2019, at the age of 88. The conservative columnist Ross Douthat says in the New York Times that she may be the last great American novelist, because we now live in the age of internet distraction. However, I draw of the thought of the American Jesuit media theorist and cultural historian Walter J. Ong (1912-2003) to suggest a more complicated account of our age.
Saturday, July 20, 2019Trump Could Win in the Electoral College in 2020 National polls of Trump's job approval indicate that he may not win the popular vote in 2020. But he could win re-election in 2020 in the electoral College. For Trump in 2020, voter turnout in the states he won in 2016 will determine the Electoral College vote in 2020. In a disturbing piece in the New York Times (dated July 19, 2019), Nate Cohn points out Trump's resilience in Wisconsin and Florida, states he won in 2016.
Thursday, July 18, 2019How Can You Love God with Your Whole Heart? We tend to think of good and evil as diametrically opposed forces or tendencies within us. For the purposes of operationally defining univocal terms to use in philosophical discourse, we define evil as that which is not good -- and vice versa (good is that which is not evil). But Martin Buber (1878-1965) invokes the Talmudic doctrine of two urges (a good and an evil urge) to explain how you can love God with your whole heart.
Friday, June 28, 2019Simon Critchley on Tragedy's Philosophy (REVIEW ESSAY) Are you interested in the history of Western philosophy? If you are, you might Simon Critchley's accessible and thought-provoking new book Tragedy, the Greeks, and Us (Pantheon Books, 2019) interesting. In it, he develops tragedy's philosophy in the context of Western philosophy. If you feel that Trump is a tragedy, you might find Critchley's account of tragedy's philosophy resonates with your feeling that Trump is a tragedy.
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