Short description:

This book is an anthology of commentary and criticism written within the transitional period between Alan Watts? 1973 death and the twenty-first century intellectual horizon.

Long description:

This book is an anthology of commentary and criticism written within the transitional period between Alan Watts? 1973 death and the twenty-first century intellectual horizon.

Comprised of 16 chapters written and published between 1974 and 1994, with up-to-date introductions from the essayists and other contemporary thinkers, this volume opens a window onto unexplored grounds of Alan Watts? impact within late-twentieth-century discourse ? an intermediate space where scholars reoriented their bearings through changing times and emerging academic trends. Offering varied explanations and assessments of Alan Watts, including his influence on the Beat and Hippie generations, and his popularization of Zen Buddhism in America, it tackles unaddressed questions within the milieu of late-twentieth-century America from the Reagan Revolution and religious conservatism, to paradigm shifts in Buddhist studies and the rise of post-colonial theory. Contributors? post-mortem analyses and critiques of Watts allow for a thematic rendering of their consonance or dissonance with noted Beat, Hippie, and Zen Buddhism themes of his lifetime.

This volume will appeal to scholars and students of humanistic psychology, transpersonal psychology, the psychology of religion, comparative religion, and American studies.

Table of Contents:

Introduction: Alan Watts ? Then and There  Part 1: Commentary  1. The Vintage Alan Watts  2. The Complete Alan Watts  3. Alan Watts? Metaphysical Language: Positivity in Negative Concepts  4. The Theory of Non-duality in the Philosophy of Alan Watts  5. Alan Watts and the Therapeutic Process  6. Daemon est deus Inversus: The Androgynous Dialectics of Alan Watts  7.?Beyond Separation?  8. Alan Watts?s Word on Myths of Polarity: Power to Women, Nature, and the Left Hand of God  Part 2: Criticism  9. The Meeting of the Twain: Alan Watts and The Supreme Identity  10. The Mystical Philosophy of Alan Watts  11. An Evaluation of Watts  12. Alan Watts Was Sure One Strange Kinda Chinaman!  13. The Wayward Mysticism of Alan Watts  14. A Response to Nordstrom and Pilgrim?s Critique of Alan Watts? Mysticism  15. Zen, Mysticism, and Counter-culture: The Pilgrimage of Alan Watts  16. The Influence of Oriental Mysticism on American Thought  17. Editor?s Conclusion: Alan Watts ? Yesterday and Today