Divided into three parts, of which the first is by far the longest, this philosophical sequel to 'Between Truth and Illusion' (1977), expands on the dualistic theories therein outlined, abandoning the more literary approach of its predecessor for a paradoxically aphoristic bias in which the author began to develop an almost existentialist awareness of the extent to which many so-called truths are founded upon illusory concepts and, to that extent, are not really 'true' at all but convenient fictions masking the brute reality of natural facts.

John O'Loughlin first got the idea of writing a collection of dialogues in 1978 after reading the French philosopher Diderot, one of the outstanding practitioners of the genre, and the results, several weeks later, were four fairly lengthy philosophical dialogues, which enabled him to continue developing the dualistic theories begun the previous year (1977) and included in both the mainly essayistic 'Between Truth and Illusion' (which contains his first ever philosophical dialogue) and the comparatively more aphoristic 'The Illusory Truth'. Their subject-matter ranges from book collecting as...

Dating from 1981, this collection of essays is thematically more homogeneous than anything previously written by John O'Loughlin in the genre and reflects a newly-acquired optimistic outlook on evolutionary progress as something that should culminate in a future paradise having nothing whatsoever to do with the cosmic inception of life. Art, literature, music, sex, gender, history, technology and religion are the principal themes under consideration in this volume, and they're generally treated in relation to the author's philosophy of evolution, which owes not a little, in its origins, to...

Written on and off during the winter of 1980-81, this collection of short prose starts in a relatively literary fashion, with the account of a clandestine visit of a masseuse to a priest who can no longer cope with his celibacy, and ends in a profoundly futuristic manner with an account of evolutionary progress towards a definitive Beyond, as envisaged by a radical philosopher. In between, there comes a fairly balanced alternation between prosodic and philosophic subjects ... as we follow the voyeuristic pleasures of a man covertly watching his wife getting dressed from the comfort of his...