Between Truth and Illusion: A Dualistic Philosophy - Tapa blanda

This title signifies an attempt by John James O'Loughlin to return to basics in philosophy and understand the connections and indeed interrelations of antitheses, polarities, opposites, and other such neat philosophical categories in relation to the relativity of everyday life. It is not an express attempt to expound 'the Truth' but, rather, a modest undertaking on his part to comprehend the paradoxes of the world in which we happen to live, and seek to unveil some of the illusions and superstitions which make the pursuit of philosophical truth such a difficult not to say protracted task. Hopefully the result of this undertaking is a franker and maturer approach to those very paradoxes which were the inspiration for this work and which led to some of its most striking contentions. Therefore if 'Between Truth and Illusion' cannot, by dint of its paradoxical nature, lay claims to being the Truth, it can at least be seen as the basis for a more realistic appraisal of the terms by which the pursuit of philosophical truth is made possible.

John James O’Loughlin was born in Salthill, Galway, the Republic of Ireland, of Irish- and British-born parents in 1952. Following a parental split while still a child, he was brought to England by his mother and grandmother (who had initially returned to Ireland with intent to stay) in the mid-50s and subsequently attended schools in Aldershot and, following the death and repatriation of his grandmother, Carshalton Beeches, Surrey, where, despite an enforced change of denomination from Catholic to Protestant in consequence of having been put into care by his mother, he attended a state school. Graduating in 1970 with an assortment of CSE’s (Certificate of Secondary Education) and GCE’s (General Certificate of Education), including history and music, he moved the comparatively short distance up to London and went on, 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. After a brief flirtation with Redhill Technical College back in Surrey, he returned to his former job in the West End but retired from the ABRSM in 1976 due to a combination of factors, including ill-health, and dedicated himself to writing, which, despite a brief spell as a computer tutor at Hornsey Management Agency in the late '80s and early '90s, he has continued with ever since. His novels include Changing Worlds (1976), Cross-Purposes (1979), Thwarted Ambitions (1980), Sublimated Relations (1981), and Deceptive Motives (1982). From the mid-80s Mr O'Loughlin dedicated himself exclusively to philosophy, his true literary vocation, and has penned more than sixty titles of a philosophical order, including Devil and God – The Omega Book (1985-6), Towards the Supernoumenon (1987), Elemental Spectra (1988-9), and Philosophical Truth (1991-2). John O’Loughlin lives in Crouch End, north London, England, UK, where he continues to regard himself as a kind of bohemian intellectual.