Duluth, Minnesota (OpEdNews) April 10, 2025: I recently decided to construct a ranking of my 665 OEN articles based on the number of views of each one at OEN. I quickly concluded that a ranking from 1 to 665 was impractical, because no one would be interested in looking at such a long list. After gathering a certain amount of preliminary information about my OEN articles that had been viewed more than 2,000 times each, I decided that a ranking of the "Top 20" of my OEN articles, based on the number of views of each one, would be the most reasonable ranking for me to construct.
A tip of my hat to OEN for its daily listing of the "Top 20" most frequently viewed OEN articles over the last two days for giving me the idea of compiling my "Top 20" OEN articles based on the number of views of each of them.
It has been a labor of love on my part to construct the list of the "Top 20" of my 665 OEN articles over the years.
Ah, but why bother to construct a list of my "Top 20" OEN articles at all? Good question. I'm not sure that I have a good answer to that question. But here goes my reply.
I retired from teaching at the University of Minnesota Duluth at the end of May 2009, after teaching there since September 1987. In October 2009, I published my first OEN article - the first of my 665 OEN articles. In all honesty, I have been amazed at my own productivity over my years of retirement. By now constructing the list of my "Top 20" OEN articles, I am hereby honoring and celebrating my own amazing productivity over my years of retirement.
In addition, since my retirement at the end of May 2009, at the age of 65, it seems to me that I have been living the philosophical life far more thoroughly than I did in the first 65 years of my life. And so by celebrating my life in my retirement years in the present "Probe" essay, I am also hereby honoring my living the philosophical life far more thoroughly in my retirement years than I did in the first 65 years of my life - perhaps most notably in my recent 28,800-word 665th OEN article "Fareed Zakaria and Ezra Klein on President Trump's Foreign Policy" (dated March 24, 2025).
In my estimate, living the philosophical life involves learning how to engage in what Ong refers to as "the Art of discourse" in the subtitle of his massively researched 1958 book Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue: From the Art of Discourse to the Art of Reason - "the Art of Reason," that is in Ramist logic and in philosophical thought in the Age of Reason. Ong's massively researched 1958 book is a history of the formal study of logic from Aristotle, who invented the formal study of logic, down to the French Renaissance logician and educational reformer and Protestant martyr Peter Ramus (1515-1572). I return to this way of understanding the philosophical life later on in the present essay.
In any event, here are my "Top 20" OEN articles over the years, based on the number of views of each one: (1) 11,691 views: "Who Was Walter Ong, and Why Is His Thought Important Today?" (dated March 11, 2010; my first OEN article was dated October 10, 2009). (2)9,218 views: "Celebrating Walter J. Ong's Thought" (dated December 30, 2017). (3) 8,601 views: "More Americans Should Try to Understand Modernity as Walter Ong Understands It" (dated July 1, 2011). (4) 8,473 views: "Hillary Clinton Urges Us to Stand Up to Extremists in the U.S." (dated March 16, 2012). (5) 8,400 views: "Martha Nussbaum on Why Democracy Needs the Humanities" (dated May 4, 2010). (6) 5,616 views: "The Questionable Ethical Teaching of the Catholic Bishops Regarding Abortion in the First Trimester Should Be Debated" (dated January 3, 2011). (7) 5,567 views: "Was William Faulkner a Conservative Writer? No, Not Quite!" (dated March 3, 2011). (8) 5,538 views: "James Carroll Profiles Pope Francis in the NEW YORKER" (dated December 17, 2013). (9) 4,043 views: "In Defense of Manly Virtue: Camille Paglia vs. Walter Ong and David Bakan" (dated December 30, 2013). (10) 3,900 views: "Jiddu Krishnamurti and Anthony de Mello, S.J.: Two Spiritual Guides from India to Enlighten Us" (dated September 4, 2012). (11) 3,028 views: "The Two Americas Should Be Discussed Further" (dated November 24, 2012). (12) 3,010 views: "James Carroll's Call to Arms" (dated March 17, 2011). (13) 2,999 views: "Not For Profit, Eh? Hold on There, Martha Nussbaum!" (dated April 3, 2010). (14) 2,945 views: "Walter J. Ong's Philosophical Thought" (dated September 20, 2020). (15) 2,960 views: "Edward O. Wilson Inveighs Against Organized Religion" (dated November 16, 2014). (16) 2,910 views: "Roman Catholic Moral Reasoning in the Supreme Court Ruling in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby" (dated July 2, 2014). (17) 2,859 views: "Why Doesn't Pope Francis Support Freedom of Speech?" (dated January 28, 2015). (18) 2,831 views: "Justin Frank, M.D., Puts President Obama on the Couch" (dated October 19, 2011). (19) 2,784 views: "Bishop Olmsted Is Wrong in the Abortion Controversy in Phoenix" (dated December 23, 2010). (20) 2,778 views: "Pope Francis on Evil and Satan" (dated March 24, 2019). (Links to each of my "Top 20" OEN articles can be found in the "References" at the end of this essay.)
At a glance, we can see from the "Top 20" list that four of my "Top 20" OEN articles were published in 2011; three, in 2012; 2, in 2013; 2 again, in 2014. After 2014, no more than one of my OEN articles made the "Top 20."
In addition to the downward slope of my most popular OEN articles being from the most distant years from now, it is also humbling for me to see that the most recent of my 665 OEN articles over the years to make the "Top 20" was published on September 20, 2020. In other words, none of my OEN articles published since September 20, 2020, has received more than the 2,778 views that my number 20 OEN article in the "Top 20" received. Put differently, it now appears from the "Top 20" list that my best years for writing widely viewed OEN articles are now behind me. Perhaps the time has now come for me to stop writing articles for OEN - and move on to other endeavors in my remaining retirement years.
Now, in addition to writing about William Faulkner in two of my "Top 20" OEN articles, I have also written about him in my ground-breaking essay "Faulkner and Male Agonism" in the book Time, Memory, and the Verbal Arts: Essays on the Thought of Walter Ong, edited by Dennis L. Weeks and Jane Hoogestraat (1998, pp. 203-221).
Now, at a glance, we can see from this listing of the titles of the "Top 20" of my OEN articles that Pope Francis (born in 1936; elected pope in 2013, the first Jesuit pope,) is one of my favorite persons to write about.
In addition, we can see at a glance from this listing that the American Jesuit Renaissance specialist and cultural historian and pioneering media ecology theorist Walter Jackson Ong, Jr. (1912-2003; Ph.D. in English, Harvard University, 1955) of Saint Louis University, the Jesuit university in the City of St. Louis, Missouri - where, over the years, I took five course from Father Ong.
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