Talk:Alan Watts

Article quality

This is a long and rambling article, with lots of uncited or poorly cited opinions, and some enormous quotes. Would there be any interest in rewriting it to look more like a Wikipedia article and less like an essay? John (talk) 19:12, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

I agree, the one quote is overlong and I shortened it considerably while retaining the meaning. What other areas of the article need attention? Ratel 🌼 (talk) 04:13, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for shortening the quote, that's a start.

Here's a sample sentence.

With modest financial means, they chose to live in pastoral surroundings, and Watts, an only child, grew up playing at brookside, learning the names of wild flowers and butterflies. Probably because of the influence of his mother's religious family the Buchans, an interest in "ultimate things" seeped in.

Pastoral surroundings --> countryside?

Playing at brookside? Presumably not the Channel 4 soap?

"ultimate things" Where is this a quote from? What does it mean?

seeped in This isn't encyclopedic.

There are a lot of examples in this article of writing like this. There is also much material whose sourcing is unclear. I would rather see a shorter and more encyclopedically written article conforming to WP:V on this fairly important subject. John (talk) 13:40, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

• Looking back almost twenty years to Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Alan Watts/archive1, this has been a longstanding problem at this article. John (talk) 04:23, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

Sadly yes, we need a skilled editor who can devote the time to improving it. Ratel 🌼 (talk) 06:33, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

Absolutely, but I favor an incremental approach. I would object if someone comes in one day, and in one edit, replaces 50% of the content and several dozen references with what they consider an improvement. Marcus Markup (talk) 07:30, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

Point taken. It's a worthy subject, Watts is. Very influential, even today. Ratel 🌼 (talk) 12:45, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

Speaking of references, this article could do with a lot more, and a lot better references. Too much of it is based on Watts's own writings. He is not a reliable source about himself. John (talk) 21:05, 5 January 2025 (UTC)

I'm interested in rewriting the entire article as I know his history inside and out. I may consider something in draft in the next few weeks. Viriditas (talk) 00:23, 1 September 2025 (UTC)

Could you make a short list of biographies we could use as sources? We have his autobiography, In My Own Way: An Autobiography, and the Monica Furlong book Genuine Fake: Biography of Alan Watts. What else? I suspect only magazine and newspaper articles ... Ratel 🌼 (talk) 21:16, 5 January 2025 (UTC)

On that note - here's a free resource that provides transcripts of all his talks:

https://uutter.com/c/alan-watts Noveltyfetish (talk) 22:11, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

Re: Posthumous popularity

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 and Spotify.

Not sure the wording on this is accurate. Watts was generally quite popular during his later life and after he died. The prose here suggests he regained popularity after he died with the rise of new technology, but I don't believe his popularity ever went away. Viriditas (talk) 22:07, 31 August 2025 (UTC)

This is odd

Alan Watts was referred to as a "Dr." when he gave speeches in the 1950s. He never obtained a PhD. Viriditas (talk) 21:33, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

Oh, this is interesting. Apparently, he was given an honorary Doctor of Divinity at this event. Never heard of this before and only just stumbled into it quite randomly. So they are advertising an event where he is to speak where they award him the doctorate. Viriditas (talk) 21:39, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

Found two separate photos of the event, both of which appear to be in the public domain. I will be uploading them momentarily. According to Columbus & Rice (2017), Alan Watts was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Divinity from the University of Vermont in 1958 for his "scholarly contributions marking him as one of our country's outstanding authorities on comparative religion" (UVM). During the event, Watts gave an address entitled "Faith Beyond Belief" that was taped and transcribed by professor of religion Albert W. Sadler. However, I can find no trace of it. Viriditas (talk) 00:34, 17 September 2025 (UTC)

Lead

known for interpreting and popularising Buddhist, Taoist, and Hindu philosophy for a Western audience.

This misses the mark by a mile. Watts did not interpret and popularize these things. He provided his own unique synthesis and interpretation that was outside both the mainstream religious institutions and academia. That's literally his life's work, intent, and purpose. Viriditas (talk) 22:35, 16 September 2025 (UTC)

Agreed. It doesn't belong in the article. I read the The Way of Zen when I was 16, and it helped me form my own outside ideas about how to approach the universe. Carlstak (talk) 14:30, 17 September 2025 (UTC)

Of course it belongs in the article. That Watts popularized and interpreted Eastern religions is non-controversial. Marcus Markup (talk) 15:40, 17 September 2025 (UTC)

It’s one of the most controversial claims related to Watts, in fact. Most academic scholars do not recognize these ideas as Eastern religions but rather Watts’ unique interpretation and synthesis which he brought to the table in the form of comparative religion. I don’t think he was responsible for popularizing these ideas. It was very much part of the popular culture at the time. What Watts did was he refused to be associated with an official university or an official religion, and was forced to survive by writing books and going on lecture tours. This allowed him to bring his ideas directly to the people without the filter of academia or the church. In a nutshell, he was popularizing his ideas. Viriditas (talk) 19:40, 17 September 2025 (UTC)

Right on. His words spoke to me and my hippie friends because the last thing we were looking for was religion, though we wanted to know what they were about. Watts inspired us to think for ourselves about spiritual matters. Carlstak (talk) 21:35, 17 September 2025 (UTC)

You nailed it. And the very idea that someone would encourage people to think for themselves is the foundation of education and teaching. And it's very much just as controversial today as it was back then (This is what Randi Weingarten's new book is about). I was just reading Albert W. Sadler's remarkable account of Watt's life and Sadler goes there for just a moment. Sadler recalls that when he attended Watts' honorary doctorate reception in 1958, every academic of any standing was affiliated with a Congregational church, and if you weren't, well, you weren't a professor. I ran into this kind of thing a year or so ago when I was writing about American zoologist S. F. Light in the 1930s and 1940s. It turns out that the majority of the Zoology department at Berkeley were active with the local church. You just couldn't operate in that milieu without working with the religious authorities. In any case, Sadler is quite the character. He recorded and transcribed Watts' address and contacted the local religious authorities. They listened to it and refused to acknowledge or address it. The sad reality is that people don't want to think for themselves. They want to be told what to do. They want to follow, not to lead. Watts was talking about the complete opposite of that, where each person leads by recognizing their true self. The world wasn't ready for Watts back then and they aren't ready for him now. Viriditas (talk) 21:56, 17 September 2025 (UTC)

> And the very idea that someone would encourage people to think for themselves is the foundation of education and teaching.

Advocating "Thinking for yourself" is, paradoxically, advocating orthodox Zen. Watts was more orthodox than many people give him credit. Anyway, the only reason I decided to chime in on this matter was to prevent a third editor from chiming in and using this discussion as rationale for changing the lead... I am in no way here to debate the issue. Marcus Markup (talk) 12:33, 18 September 2025 (UTC)

The entire article is a complete state of disarray and requires rewriting. That includes the lead. Viriditas (talk) 01:48, 19 September 2025 (UTC)

"The Way of Zen is a 1957 non-fiction book on Zen Buddhism and Eastern philosophy by philosopher and religious scholar Alan Watts." It sounds like you have strong opinion about the nuance of the matter, but to say that characterization is "off by a mile" is going to be a long shot. ~2025-31581-00 (talk) 18:38, 7 November 2025 (UTC)

Reliance on autobiography

Given the massive number of sources that have been published about Watts since he died, the reliance on his autobiography is unusual and out of sorts with the kind of sourcing we tend to use. While there's nothing forbidding that kind of usage, it's generally best to to use our secondary sources. Viriditas (talk) 01:16, 25 September 2025 (UTC)