Look and Listen

Biography

Since completing my Ph.D in 1979, I have been writing as difficult health prevented me working full time. From my schooldays I had been absorbed by history and politics, and found what I read sometimes exciting and sometimes emotionally painful. Later I focused on political ideas - both coming to realise these were often moral positions, and then becoming angry at people who complained about moral issues without realising they were taking sides in politics. The one way government training schemes helped me was learning computing skills from 1986 onward, so that I became able to write with my own machine (lighter touch than a typewriter), and later develop an Internet connection and my own website (www.o-kane.f2s.com). Early on I had found that fiction writing did not suit me, so I concentrated on moral philosophical writing. I have published two books: 'Politics and Morality under Conflict' (Pentland Press, 1994) and 'Ethics and Radical Freedom' (Melrose Books, 2005), plus some articles and my website material.

Inspiration

The influences on me have always been various, and one thing I owed to my university teachers was to recognise that there's almost always some sense in any ideas and arguments, however farfetched or repellent they may appear. In fact, I never found anyone I wholly agreed with and came to spend much time studying people I disagreed with or even detested! (My Ph.D involved Christianity and Socialism and I have never believed in either). So, my writing tends to be a collage of many ideas and later I unwittingly found myself mixing continental and analytic philosophy - but I am happy about that. I confess that anger has always been a driving force, including when I felt that many themes (some concerning family in particular) ought to have been dealt with long ago and had not been. In a more background sense, my parents were always an influence. They were themselves independent minded people who had to struggle with difficult family relations and at times poor health.