If John O'Loughlin began his philosophical vocation, or commitment to writings of a philosophical order, back with Between Truth and Illusion (1977), which was primarily dualistic, then he has elected to conclude or, at any rate, oppose it, some thirty years later, with a volume of revised and reformatted weblogs entitled Beyond Truth and Illusion, which he has specifically limited to fifty-two titled essays to tie-in with his principal e-mail address at ‘yahoo’. He has subtitled or, rather, described this as a volume of aphoristic essays, which is to be taken to mean material of an aphoristic character which has titles above rather than at the side. In the latter case, he would have described it as being a volume of essayistic aphorisms, and that, in turn, would have connoted with the way he tended to shape the contents of Between Truth and Illusion way back at the start of his philosophical journey. Therefore it could be said that Mr O'Loughlin has come, if not exactly full-circle, then to a contrary position from how he began, though he doesn't necessarily regard aphoristic essays as being in any way superior to essayistic aphorisms, especially since he has spent the greater part of the past thirty years penning either essays or, when he was philosophically advanced enough, aphorisms, the latter of which constitute for him a kind of ne plus ultra of philosophical presentation more suited to the context of metaphysics, and thus in effect to both theology and theosophy, than to anything else. However, the weblog templates and structures that he used in connection with the bulk of this and other recent material tended to encourage titles above and separate from the main text, and therefore he was obliged to revert to an essay-like presentation of ideas that has always seemed to him somewhat regressive when compared with, or perhaps one should say contrasted to, the late aphoristic works of his pre-weblog writings. Nevertheless, even if that is the case, he has done his best to ensure that the subject-matter remains as radical and theoretically cogent as before, and we think we can confidently say that the results often transcend what was achieved more aphoristically in the past, when John O'Loughlin was still ploughing through what became 'Opera D’Oeuvre', the tautologically paradoxical name he gave to his collected writings. So much so, that he can also confidently claim to have reached the goal of his life’s endeavour and to be at the top of his pursuit of truth, a ‘top’ which is effectively 'beyond truth and illusion', and thus a cause of joyful celebration. - A Centretruths editorial.
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