Book Description

The ironically entitled 'Flopsided Conversations' is intended as a kind of sequel to 'Lopsided Conversations' (1976-82), insofar as that was volume one and this is volume two of John O'Loughlin's 'collected dialogues' and, like its predecessor, it reflects a concern with metaphysical speculation and religious instruction that overlaps with the ideological philosophy of Social Transcendentalism in a number of respects, being a comparatively early manifestation of the philosophy that was to become increasingly metaphysical, and therefore aphoristic, in the course of time. This second volume is derived from four prior publications, starting with 'Future Transformations' and progressing, via 'Post-Atomic Perspectives' and 'The Will to Truth', to 'Social Transcendentalism', the author's first stated articulation of the philosophy that was to preoccupy him long after hr had abandoned these dialogues, dating from 1982-4, for more elevated structures with which to express his developing concern with metaphysics and all things godly. No such structures, meaning principally aphorisms and maxims, are discernible here, though; but this is nevertheless beyond the material contained in the aforementioned 'Lopsided Conversations', including the aphoristic appendix, and should only be broached after one has sufficiently familiarized oneself with that to wish to proceed deeper into the roots of the philosophy in question, and therefore acquire the foundations with which to climb beyond dialogues to the aphoristic heights of metaphysics proper.