Counter-Currents
Remembering Alan Watts (January 6, 1915–November 16, 1973)
Greg Johnson
172 words
Alan Watts was born on this day in 1915. A prolific scholar and dazzling stylist, Watts is best known as the chief popularizer of Asian philosophy for the Beat and Hippy movements, but he was also an original thinker in his own right and a quiet man of the Right. In commemoration of his birth, I wish to draw your attention to these works at Counter-Currents:
- Martin Aurelio, “The Wisdom of the East?“
- Counter-Currents Radio Podcast no. 401, “Five Essential Books“
- Greg Johnson, “Alan Watts at 100” (Spanish translation)
- Greg Johnson, “The Spiritual Materialism of Alan Watts: A Review of Does It Matter?” (French translation)
- James J. O’Meara, “Alan Watts: The First Alt-Academic“
- James J. O’Meara, “‘PC is for Squares, Man’: Alan Watts and the Game of Trump“
- James J. O’Meara, “Re-Kindling Alan Watts,” Part 1, Part 2
- James J. O’Meara, “There and Then: Personal and Memorial Reflections on Alan Watts“
You can buy James J. O’Meara’s Mysticism after Modernism here.
Note: James O’Meara’s essays on Watts have been collected in his book Mysticism after Modernism: Crowley, Evola, Neville, Watts, Colin Wilson & Other Populist Gurus (Melbourne: Manticore, 2018).
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2 comments
Dr. Johnson, I always enjoy these “Remembering…” features for the movers and shakers of the movement. They’re a great window to all the contributions at C-C discussing the particular figure.
I’ve been thinking it would be cool to compile a C-C calendar for the website. The current month could sit in the sidebar with clickable dots for the birthdays and once clicked, you’d be taken to these “Remembering…” pages. It’s another way to honor them and make it easier to expose newcomers to C-C of their thoughts and ideas.
I know you’ve stated on livestreams your desire to move away from the publishing arm of C-C, but a published yearly calendar with the birthdays and days of importance to WN might be popular. There are so many potential aesthetic avenues you could go with it… landscape paintings, quotes by the great thinkers born on that month, etc.
Just food for thought. I’m sure somebody has already presented this idea to you.
Thanks for these interesting essays on Watts (the one commemorating his centenary helps to ‘situate’ him very nicely). I’ve never read anything by or about him, and for some reason associated his name with being some kind of hippie “philosopher” or New Age guru. I did not realize he was a serious writer, let alone a man of the Right (or of a certain wing of the Right). Johnson’s review of Watts, Does it Matter?, has persuaded me to read it, though I’m not convinced I will embrace Watts’s rejection of dualism (which these days is enjoying a bit of a philosophical rebound); I am a man of the West who generally finds such Eastern insights as fall my way unintelligible. But perhaps the mere reading of the book will expand my consciousness …
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