Alan Watts 
Alan Watts – In the Academy 
Essays and Lectures

Gold Winner, 2017 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards in the Philosophy category



To commemorate the 2015 centenary of the birth of Alan Watts (1915–1973), Peter J. Columbus and Donadrian L. Rice have assembled a much-needed collection of Watts’s scholarly essays and lectures. Compiled from professional journals, monographs, scholarly books, conferences, and symposia proceedings, the volume sheds valuable light on the developmental arc of Watts’s thinking about language and mysticism, Buddhism and Zen, Christianity, comparative religion, psychedelics, and psychology and psychotherapy. This definitive collection challenges Watts’s reputation as a ‘popularizer’ or ‘philosophical entertainer, ‘ revealing his concerns to be much more expansive and transdisciplinary than is suggested by the parochial ‘Zen Buddhist’ label commonly affixed to his writings. The editors’ authoritative introduction elucidates contemporary perspectives on Watts’s life and work, and supports a bold rethinking of his contributions to psychology, philosophy, and religion.

Tabla de materias

List of Illustrations

Editors’ Preface



Introduction: Alan Watts and the Academic Enterprise


Peter J. Columbus and
Donadrian L. Rice



Part I: Language and Mysticism



1. On the Meaning and Relation of Absolute and Relative (1950)



2. The Negative Way (1951)



3. The Language of Metaphysical Experience: The Sense of Non-Sense (1953)



4. On Philosophical Synthesis (1953)



5. Philosophy beyond Words (1975)




Part II: Buddhism and Zen



6. The Problem of Faith and Works in Buddhism (1941).



7. Zen (1948)



8. The Way of Liberation in Zen Buddhism (1955)



9. Beat Zen, Square Zen, and Zen (1958)



10. Zen and Politics (1962)



11. Prefatory Essay to Suzuki’s
Outlines of Mahayana Buddhism (1963)




Part III: Christianity



12.
Theologia Mystica (1944)



13. The Case for God (1946)



14. The Meaning of Priesthood (1946)



15. The Christian Doctrine of Marriage (1946)



Part IV: Comparative Religion



16. Worship in Sacrament and Silence (1964/1971)



17. Western Mythology: Its Dissolution and Transformation (1970)



18. The Future of Religion (1970)



19. Unity in Contemplation (1974)




Part V: Psychedelics



20. The Individual as Man/World (1963)



21. A Psychedelic Experience: Fact or Fantasy? (1964) 



22. Psychedelics and Religious Experience (1968) 



23. Ordinary Mind is the Way (1971) 




Part VI: Psychology and Psychotherapy



24. Asian Psychology and Modern Psychiatry (1953)



25. Convention, Conflict, and Liberation: Further Observations on Asian Psychology and Modern Psychiatry (1956)



26. Eternity as the Unrepressed Body (1959)



27. Oriental and Occidental Approaches to the Nature of Man (1962)



28. The Woman in Man (1963) 



29. An Interview with Alan Watts (with Philip D. Ungerer) (1969)



30. Psychotherapy and Eastern Religion: Metaphysical Bases of Psychiatry (1974)          



Appendix A

List of Contributors

Index

Sobre el autor

Peter J. Columbus is Administrator of the Shantigar Foundation in Rowe, Massachusetts.
Donadrian L. Rice is Professor of Psychology at the University of West Georgia. Together they are the coeditors of
Alan Watts—Here and Now: Contributions to Psychology, Philosophy, and Religion, also published by SUNY Press.