Nature, Man and Woman

By Alan Watts

From “perhaps the foremost interpreter of Eastern disciplines for the contemporary West—and an author who ‘had the rare gift of ‘writing beautifully the unwritable’” (Los Angeles Times)—a guide that draws on Chinese Taoism to reexamine humanity’s place in the natural world and the relation between body and spirit.

Western thought and culture have coalesced around a series of constructed ideas—that human beings stand separate from a nature that must be controlled; that the mind is somehow superior to the body; that all sexuality entails a seduction—that in some way underlie our exploitation of the earth, our distrust of emotion, and our loneliness and reluctance to love. Here, Watts fundamentally challenges these assumptions, drawing on the precepts of Taoism to present an alternative vision of man and the universe—one in which the distinctions between self and other, spirit and matter give way to a more holistic way of seeing.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Jul 11, 2012
• ISBN: 9780307822987

Alan Watts

Alan Watts published over 25 books, including The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are, The Way of Zen and Tao: The Watercourse Way. He was a philosopher, academic and theologian, who wrote and spoke widely on Asian philosophy and theology. He is best known as an interpreter of Zen Buddhism in particular, and of Indian and Chinese philosophy in general. He was the author of more than twenty books on the philosophy and psychology of religion. He died in 1973.

Reviews for Nature, Man and Woman

[gwak-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Maybe the most dense of Watts' books. Beautiful ideas. Need to reread.

[alexgalindo_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The human animal, can justly be described as a tangle of non-sense, and that certainly seems so whilst observing anyone. Alan W. Watts takes his vast knowledge of world theologies, and an intensely introspective philosophy that reveals Man's alienation from nature, Woman, and himself.