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Alan Watts
 | This article needs additional citations for verification. (December 2024) |
Alan Watts | |
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| Born | Alan Wilson Watts 6 January 1915 Chislehurst, Kent, England |
| Died | 16 November 1973 (aged 58) |
| Alma mater | Seabury-Western Theological Seminary |
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| Era | 20th-century philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
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| Website | alanwatts |
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Alan Wilson Watts (6 January 1915 – 16 November 1973) was a British and American writer, speaker, and self-styled "philosophical entertainer",[2] known for interpreting and popularising Buddhist, Taoist, and Hindu philosophy for a Western audience.[3]
Watts gained a following while working as a volunteer programmer at the KPFA radio station in Berkeley, California. He wrote more than 25 books and articles on religion and philosophy, introducing the Beat Generation and the emerging counterculture to The Way of Zen (1957), one of the first best selling books on Buddhism. In Psychotherapy East and West (1961), he argued that psychotherapy could become the West's way of liberation if it discarded dualism, as the Eastern ways do. He considered Nature, Man and Woman (1958) to be, "from a literary point of view—the best book I have ever written".[4] He also explored human consciousness and psychedelics in works such as "The New Alchemy" (1958) and The Joyous Cosmology (1962).
His lectures found posthumous popularity through regular broadcasts on public radio, especially in California and New York, and more recently on the internet, on sites and apps such as YouTube[5] and Spotify.
- ^ Lowe, Scott (February 2019). "Alan Watts – In the Academy: Essays and Lectures ed. by Peter J. Columbus and Donadrian L. Rice (review)". Nova Religio. 22 (3): 129–130. doi:10.1525/nr.2019.22.3.129. S2CID 151087402.
- ^ Furlong, Monica (March 2001). Zen Effects: The Life of Alan Watts (1 ed.). SkyLight Paths. p. 150. ISBN 1893361322.
- ^ James Craig Holte The Conversion Experience in America: A 'Sourcebook on American Religious Conversion Autobiography page 199
- ^ Watts, Alan W. (1973). In My Own Way: An Autobiography 1915–1965. New York: Pantheon Books. p. 280.
- ^ Braswell, Sean (8 October 2019). "A Dead Philosopher Makes New Connections on YouTube". www.ozy.com. Archived from the original on 15 October 2019. Retrieved 15 October 2019.
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