Synopses of works in JOURNEY TO THE CENTRE

SYNOPTIC OVERVIEW OF EARLY PHILOSOPHICAL WORKS (1977–84)

BY JOHN O'LOUGHLIN

1. BETWEEN TRUTH AND ILLUSION: My first exercise in philosophy, originally penned in 1977, takes dualism as its starting-point and develops its commonsensical logic through three parts, the first of which is essayistic, the second of which is a series of aphoristic reflections on the philosophy outlined in Part One, and the third of which is a dialogue between me, the so-named 'philosopher', and an imaginary student ... that strives both to clarify and enlarge upon the main contentions of the work.

2. THE ILLUSORY TRUTH: Also divided into three parts, of which the first is by far the longest, this companion volume to the above expands on the dualistic theories outlined before, abandoning the more literary approach of BETWEEN TRUTH AND ILLUSION for an essayistic and aphoristic purism in which I began to develop an almost existentialist awareness of the extent to which many so-called truths are founded upon illusory concepts and, to that extent, are not really 'true' at all.

3. A QUESTION OF BELIEF: I first got the idea of writing a series of dialogues from reading the French philosopher Diderot, one of the great masters of the genre, and the result, several weeks later, was four fairly lengthy philosophical dialogues, which enabled me to continue developing the dualistic theories begun the previous year (1977). Their subject-matter ranges from book collecting as an art and the morality of films to the influence of astrology on writers and historical perspectives, and although they tend to be a little one-sided, they are at least broad enough to be of some interest to the general reader.

4. THE FALL OF LOVE: The six essays included here, dating from 1979, signify a transitional stage away from the dualism of the above works towards the Spenglerian historicism that, with the influence of environment upon the rise and fall of civilizations, was to characterize my literary work at around this period. Subjects discussed in such a light include literature, music, meditation, art, environment, and love.

5. THE TRANSCENDENTAL FUTURE: This collection of philosophical writings, dating from 1980, begins with an introductory essay and progresses through some five lengthy dialogues. Subjects tackled include spiritual truth, environmental transformations, the concept of a transcendent future, psychic evolution, and the rise of transcendentalism in art. In sum, THE TRANSCENDENTAL FUTURE is a far from definitive but nonetheless highly engaging and sometimes mind-boggling debate on a variety of controversial issues.

6. THE WAY OF EVOLUTION: Dating from 1981, this collection of nine essays is thematically more homogeneous than those included in THE FALL OF LOVE, and reflects a more optimistic outlook on evolutionary progress, as something which should culminate in a future paradise having nothing whatsoever to do with the cosmic inception of life. Art, literature, music, sex, gender, history, technology, and religion are the principal themes under consideration here, and they are generally treated in relation to my philosophy of evolution, which owes not a little, in its origins, to the estimable likes of Nietzsche, Spengler, and Theilhard de Chardin. As usual for my work of this period, THE WAY OF EVOLUTION ends with a series of maxims, which both summarize and encapsulate its overall philosophy.

7. THE IMPORTANCE OF TECHNOLOGY: Written in the winter of 1981-82, this collection of dialogues is more stylistically and thematically evolved than those included in THE TRANSCENDENTAL FUTURE, with subjects ranging from the significance of spiritual development to the nature of philosophical truth, the unitary goal of evolution, different types of decadence, and the parallels between literary figures such as Henry Miller and Malcolm Muggeridge. Also featured, as per custom, is an aphoristic appendix, which both subsumes and expands on a variety of the subjects under discussion.

8. FUTURE TRANSFORMATIONS: This volume of philosophy, combining essays, dialogues, and maxims, goes way beyond the scope of my earlier philosophical works in outlining what I consider to be the logical stages of evolution beyond man which will have to be passed through before definitive salvation can be achieved in a transcendent goal of evolution ... analogous to Teilhard de Chardin's Omega Point. One could say that I have attempted to concretize Nietzschean notions concerning man's overcoming ... in respect of specific post-human stages. Hitherto, when I wrote about more advanced stages of life, it was generally within the scope and definition of man. Here, by contrast, the attainment to a more artificial stage of evolution is, ipso facto, chronologically beyond man and thus implicitly post-human. Such was the revolutionary break with my earlier thinking which occurred early in 1982, and it is, I believe, of momentous significance! Henceforth my philosophical task was largely to be a refinement upon and modification of contentions outlined here. Obviously, in the many years that have passed since then, several changes, some of them quite drastic, have occurred in my perspective. But the beginnings of my mature philosophical oeuvre are here, in FUTURE TRANSFORMATIONS, and it was from this time onwards that I began to grow into what I like to think of as a sort of messianic self-awareness.

9. BECOMING AND BEING: Divided into two parts, the first of which is autobiographical and the second biographical, this project strives to outline my development as a writer and the influences, both literary and philosophical, which shaped me over the years leading up to 1982. The first part, containing subjects ranging from sex and politics to health and writers, is slightly Nietzschean in its speculative approach to autobiography, while the second and more voluminous part, which deals with the estimable likes of John Cowper Powys, D.H. Lawrence, Aldous Huxley, Hermann Hesse, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Arthur Koestler, Lawrence Durrell, Henry Miller, and George Orwell, is intended to provide a biographical summary and fairly blunt appraisal of authors whose works were to inspire me during my formative years as a writer. It is as though they were the beings whom I was eventually destined to become or, rather, that I became being - and hence a writer - through them. Finally, there is an appendix comprised of a list of reading material borrowed from Hornsey Library over a twelve-year period from 1977-89, which should intrigue those interested to discover how a self-taught, and even self-made, person can fare with regard to the acquirement of a literary culture that owes little or nothing to school or college.

10. POST-ATOMIC PERSPECTIVES: Combining maxims with aphorisms, essays, and dialogues, this work goes beyond the scope of my previous philosophical projects in both its form and content, opening out towards a post-atomic future in what amounts to an entirely new civilization. As conceived of here, the aphorisms are slightly longer and freer than the maxims and thus lead, logically enough, to the essays, which constitute Part Three of the book. Subjects include the direction of literature in the civilization to come; the transitional nature of contemporary literature; revelations concerning future life forms and their relationship to what is called the Ultimate Creation; the nature of divine love in relation to other types of love and its bearing on messianic credibility; antithetical equivalents - such as birds and planes or horses and motorbikes - in the evolution of human and other life; how the State 'withers' and why; the paradoxical allegiance of Christian pagans, or so-called Christians whose loyalty is rather more to the Creator than to Christ; and transcendental transvaluations in a world that has largely turned its back on nature. Part Four is comprised of four dialogues, which continue the philosophical debate in a slightly more dramatic vein.

11. THE WILL TO TRUTH: My main philosophical project of 1983 combines dialogues and essays with aphorisms and maxims in a four-part volume of which essays form the greater proportion. However, nine dialogues is no mean undertaking, and they range from subjects as diverse, albeit interrelated, as the freeing of art from mundane attachments as it evolves from pagan to transcendental times; the distinction between Jews and Israelis; the development of awareness at the expense of feeling in art; the moral implications of sexual sublimation; the evolutionary struggle from gravity to curved space; the development of religion from the personal to the universal; the nature of petty-bourgeois art; the possibility of denominational progress in Western religion; and the apotheosis of the 'universal man'. Such, then, is the scope of Part One, while Part Two enlarges on many of the subjects touched upon in the dialogues, as well as introduces a number of new ones, including the main distinction between Christianity and Transcendentalism; the psychology of swearers; the irrelevance of punishment to a transcendental society; architectural and sartorial relationships to gravity both upwards and downwards; understanding Jazz in relation to other types of modern music; the distinction between philosophy and pseudo-philosophy; and the nature of ultimate music. Originally intended as a sort of sequel to the above, Parts Three and Four move us from the phenomenal realm of dialogues and essays to what I like to think of as the noumenal realm of aphorisms and maxims, in which the will is One with the truth it strives to convey through the most concise means and is, if not Truth itself, then at any rate certainly truthful! Subjects treated here include the relation between sexuality and dress; the nature of the self; the significance of Israel; the role and nature of worship in popular religion; poetry verses philosophy; the evolution of the arts; the metaphysics of modern music; the psyche; God; ideology; and gender. Although THE WILL TO TRUTH should not be taken for the Truth, it signifies a significant stage on the road to my achievement of greater degrees of philosophical truth in due course, and is certainly more radical than anything preceding it in this field.

12. SOCIAL TRANSCENDENTALISM - 'Social Means to a Transcendent End': This collection of essays, dialogues, aphorisms, and maxims, dating from 1983-84, is largely the reverse, in formal terms, of THE WILL TO TRUTH, inasmuch as its first part is essayistic and its second part entirely composed of dialogues, thereby again bringing these two modes of philosophical phenomenality into harmony or, at any rate, close juxtaposition. Here, as before, the essays constitute the main part, and they are once more conceived within the protective umbrella of a uniform ideology - namely the Social Transcendentalism which I had been building towards in earlier works but which here comes to ideological fruition. Thus, whatever the subject, it is treated from a uniform standpoint, the standpoint of a socially transcendent outlook upon life, and this even when I am not consciously aware of the fact. Such an outlook is beyond humanism and all other worldly ideologies, having to do with evolutionary striving towards a 'divine kingdom'. Yet this 'divine kingdom' does not follow death, as we customarily understand it, but presupposes the ordering of society according to certain idealistic principles designed to free mankind from its atomic past. Hence in each of these essays and dialogues, not to mention the ensuing aphorisms and maxims, a Social Transcendentalist concern with Truth is what really matters, and it is this which leads us towards the heavenly millennium to-come. Whether the subject is art, literature, sex, politics, psychology, drugs, or whatever, the emphasis on Truth from a specific ideological perspective is what lifts SOCIAL TRANSCENDENTALISM beyond the sterile realm of intellectual speculation to the potent challenge of universal freedom.