Mr O’Loughlin ought by now to have learnt his lesson in regard to the sorts of claim made before about ‘definitive texts’ but, frankly, some further philosophical progress has been made here, if in regard to a revaluation - evaluating and revaluating being germane to the cyclical structures of his work - of a quite long-standing evaluation concerning devolution, which only confirms that intellectual progress happens by degrees and is a long and often tortuous process during the course of which new insights and logical configurations come to light which enable the author to readdress an old contention or, in this case, bone of contention, to a more satisfactory resolution.... Which does not mean that progress towards some definitive position is not possible or is simply a delusion, as some would have us believe; but it takes time and involves many rethinks and revaluations along the way such that only a very brave and honest type of person, more likely male and not overly concerned with commercial viability or professorial credibility, would be capable of undertaking, given all the complexities involved. Nevertheless further progress, or perhaps one should say redress, has emerged here, in this well-nigh definitive text, and it is to the author’s cyclical credit that he has been able to recycle old material and thereby fashion something new, not least in respect of a more developed concept of religious freedom which will require the ideological subordination and even democratic supersession of political freedoms if globalization is ultimately to emerge in a more credibly universal guise - a contention which, although touched upon by Mr O’Loughlin before, here achieves something like a definitive presentation. – A Centretruths editorial.
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