Instru-mental

Following on from his title 'So There', this work also takes the form of a mixture of aphorisms and maxims, or brief discursive observations on a variety of subjects of interest or concern to the author, coupled to numbered sequences of systematically-structured conclusions about salient aspects of the overall philosophy which, in this book, succeed those parts (1 and 3) specifically given to the aphoristic material, as though to sum-up or clarify, on a more philosophically intensive basis, what had already been more discursively observed. Of course, there is more to it than that, and John O'Loughlin would be lying if he didn't also add that this title both refines upon and extends beyond some of the observations and conclusions of the previous one, thereby in a sense bringing this phase of his philosophy closer to what he holds to be a 'summational peak', beyond which it would be difficult though not perhaps impossible to go. Therefore it would seem that Mr O'Loughlin has reached, or almost reached, the end of his long intellectual journey, summing up what it has taken him the best part of four decades to arrive at, experience coupled to observation leading to conclusive results, the logical credibility of which here attains to a kind of philosophical apotheosis in the numbered maxims of parts 2 and 4.