This 2002 e-book directly follows on from Freedom and Determinism (2001) not only with a deeper understanding of the distinction between Nature and Civilization, but with greater insight into the division within both Nature and Civilization of sensual and sensible alternatives, as well as with a wider interpretation of Nature and Civilization such that brings a more exactingly comprehensive perspective to bear on each, whilst still adhering to a specific civilized bias, as before. But as well as an enlargement of perspective which allows for a sharp differentiation between the natural and the man-made, or artificial, there is an enhancement of logic such that clarifies the issues of salvation and damnation as never before, so that there can be no doubt as to the issues involved and on what basis a sensible alternative to a sensual predominance should be achieved. In this respect, the distinction between freedom and binding (determinism), so characteristic of various earlier texts, is less symptomatic of the one or the other than of both sensual and sensible contexts, if with vastly different emphases, as described in some detail in what is, by any accounts, the most lucidly and logically consistent apologetics for an omega-oriented alternative, in sensibility, to an alpha-besotted decadence and/or barbarity, in sensuality, that could be imagined. Finally, we have to point out that the appendix is virtually as significant as the work itself in the way in which, as the effective omega point of the text, it brings to a long-overdue head a dichotomy which until quite recently the author hadn’t realized was expressive of a generalization, but which at last, in rather more than Kantian or Schopenhauerian fashion, he was able to utilize in both concrete and abstract, natural and psychic realms on terms which do it altogether more specific contextual justice - the dichotomy, I mean, between the phenomenal and the noumenal which, at long last, Mr O’Loughlin has decided to bring into line with that elemental comprehensiveness for which, we believe, his philosophy will be esteemed in times to-come. – A Centretruths editorial.
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