PREFACE

This text is largely composed of what I am wont to call philosophical supernotes - a sort of cross between essays and aphorisms - and is not written in the usual linear fashion of a straightforward progression from idea to idea, but follows a spiralling course towards a kind of ideological summit which is both an ending and a beginning, an achievement and an aspiration.� In such fashion, ideas are not stated and abandoned, as in the linear mode of writing, but are introduced on one level of the spiral and taken-up again on another, higher level later on, where they are re-worked in more detail or clarified and consummated, as the case may be.� Sometimes a particular idea, or theme, will pass through three or more turns of the ascending spiral before finally being abandoned; one might argue that such an idea is major rather than minor and forms a kind of leitmotiv to the work as a whole, appearing first in one way, then in another, modified by changing perspectives as much as by position in the literary edifice.� For why should one confine oneself merely to a single point of view?� Or expect the reader to recall everything stated on an earlier page when he is over half-way through the work?� Re-statement enhances the idea's credibility, lends it extra weight, and keeps it fresh in the mind.� I have never despised repetition, nor contradiction, or what may appear as such.� An idea tentatively expressed lower down the literary edifice may be but an introduction, an exploration of unknown and, by its peculiar nature, hazardous or controversial material.� Re-expressed in slightly different and firmer terms higher up the spiralling edifice, such an idea acquires the mantle of conviction, of ideological certitude.� In such fashion, philosophical progress is made.� And the reader, mindful of the contrast between the earlier and later perspectives, is left in no doubt of it!� He becomes the chief witness of the unfolding and maturation of higher truth - what I am wont to call Supertruth, which is above and beyond all illusion.

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John O'Loughlin, London 1986 (Revised 2006-9)