Synopses

DEVIL AND GOD - 'The Omega Book': Originally intended to be my last and ultimate book (I had already written forty-two ‘books’, this 1985-86 project, dealing with distinctions between the Devil and God, or Alpha and Omega, embraces over 250 supernotes, my definition of which is something that falls between an essay and an aphorism, not generally as long as the former nor as short as the latter. In fact, it is the indeterminacy of this self-penned genre which most characterizes DEVIL AND GOD, since one can proceed from a few-line entry to one which 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, like notes often tend to be, but have been carefully fashioned with the attention one would in fact normally 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 being evaluated and revaluated, or re-evaluated, 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 greater insight. In such fashion, any project based on these supernotes will have a curvilinear inner structure which is the product of spiralling ideas, and contrasts with the outer, book-based linear structures more typical of academic or conventional philosophy. In that respect, it is effectively theosophical.

FROM MATERIALISM TO IDEALISM: Akin to the above in structure, this 1986–87 project combines nearly 250 supernotes (or essayistic aphorisms and aphoristic notes) in its investigation of a wide variety of subjects, with particular reference to the relationships between materialism, naturalism, realism, and idealism in what is conceived to be an evolutionary framework. Hence the title FROM MATERIALISM TO IDEALISM, in which a fourfold view of history and of the world is systematically developed.

TOWARDS THE SUPERNOUMENON: Carrying on from where the above leaves off, this volume of supernotes is more intensely philosophical, as it introduces to the aforementioned fourfold structures the concept of devolutionary/evolutionary antitheses in historical evolution, coupling this to an investigation of certain key philosophers, including Schopenhauer, and contrasting his noumenal-phenomenal approach to philosophy with what I have called a superphenomenal-supernoumenal one intended to illustrate the distinction between 'artificial' modernity and 'naturalistic' antiquity. In this respect, it could be said to reflect a contrast between philosophy, as traditionally practised by alpha-stemming thinkers like Schopenhauer, and theosophy, in which an evolutionary drive towards the omega point of things is discernible.

ELEMENTAL SPECTRA: Dating from 1988–89, this more philosophically advanced work investigates the significance of the basic elements, viz. air, fire, water, and earth, with regard to a variety of different contexts, including science, politics, economics, and religion, and seeks to draw ideological and moral lessons from the apperceived correlations. Of additional significance in relation to the Elements are the relationships between being and doing, awareness and emotion, mind and brain, nature and artifice, and individualism and collectivism. There is also, within ELEMENTAL SPECTRA, a critique of Arthur Koestler's tripartite theories, as developed in books like The Act of Creation and Janus - A Summing Up, as well as a refutation of his psychological pessimism concerning the dichotomous relationship between what, shrewdly avoiding technical terms like the cerebellum and cerebrum, he calls the 'old brain' and the 'new brain'. In fact, Koestler is no less the principal philosophical target of this work than Schopenhauer was of the previous one, and although I acknowledge my debt to him as an influence on my thought, I was able to move beyond him at this point and accordingly dispense with a number of his theories.