Links to the files of
which follow the remarks below:–
Originally
intended to be my last and ultimate work, this project, dealing with
distinctions between the Devil and God, embraces over 250 ‘supernotes’, my
definition of which is something between an essay and an aphorism, not
generally as long as the former or as short as the latter.In fact, it is the indeterminacy of this
genre which most characterizes Devil and God, since one
can proceed straight from a two-line entry to one that is several pages in
length.Also significant of my definition
of supernotes is the fact that they are anything but scrappy or off-the-cuff,
as notes often are, but have been carefully fashioned with the attention one
would give to an essay or an aphorism.They also follow a strictly determined philosophical path, not veering
wildly between disparate subjects the way notebooks often do, and are subject
to the sorts of evaluating and revaluating I first introduced with the previous
text, Evaluations and Revaluations (1985), so that no theme is ever
wholly laid to rest until it has been explored from a variety of angles and
reconsidered in the light of enhanced insight.In such fashion, any project based on these supernotes will have a
curvilinear inner structure which is the product of spiralling ideas and which contrasts
with the outer, book-based rectilinear structures more typical of academic or
conventional philosophy.In that
respect, it is effectively theosophical, using that term in a metaphysical
sense. – John O’Loughlin.
John O’Loughlin was born in Salthill, Galway, the Republic
of Ireland,
of Irish- and British-born parents in 1952. Following a parental split partly due to his mother's Aldershot origins (her father, a Presbyterian from Donegal, had served in the British Army),
he was brought to England by his mother and grandmother (who upon the premature death of her husband had initially returned to Ireland after a lengthy marital absence from Athenry) in the mid-50s and, having had the benefit of private tuition from a Catholic priest, subsequently attended St. Joseph's and St. George's RC schools in Aldershot, Hants, and, with an enforced change of
denomination from Catholic to Protestant in consequence of having been sent to a children's home
by his mother upon the death and repatriation of his ethnically-protective grandmother, he went on to attend first Barrow Hedges Primary School in Carshalton Beeches, Surrey, and then Carshalton High School for Boys. Upon leaving the latter in pre-GCSE era 1970 with anassortment of CSEs
(Certificate of Secondary Education) and GCEs
(General Certificate of Education), including history and music, he moved up to London proper and proceeded, via two short-lived
jobs, to work at the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music in Bedford
Square WC1, where he eventually became responsible for booking examination venues throughout Britain and Ireland.
After a brief flirtation with further education at Redhill Technical College back in Surrey, he returned to his former job in the West End
but, due to a combination of personal factors, quit the ABRSM in 1976 and began to pursue a literary vocation which,
despite a brief spell as a computer and office-skills tutor at Hornsey Management Agency within the local YMCA in the late '80s and
early '90s, he has steadfastly continued with ever since. His novels include Changing Worlds (1976), An Interview
Reviewed (1979), Secret
Exchanges (1980), Sublimated
Relations(1981), and False Pretences (1982). Since the mid-80s John O'Loughlin has dedicated himself almost exclusively to
philosophy, which he regards as his true literary vocation, and has penned several titles of a
philosophical nature, including From Materialism to Idealism (1986–7), Towards
the Supernoumenon(1987), Elemental Spectra (1988–9), Philosophical Truth (1991–2) and,
more recently, The Best
of All Possible Worlds (2008), The Centre of Truth
(2009), Insane but not Mad (2011) and Philosophic Flights of Poetic Fancy (2012).
