Saturday, March 16, 2019

Hmm …

… Maverick Philosopher: The Seductive Sophistry of Alan Watts. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)



In his autobiography, In My Own Way — which I finished on a train to D.C., only to then pick up a copy of Time and learn that he had just died — Watts quotes a letter he received from Bernard Iddings Bell, an Episcopal priest very well known in his day. Watts, at the time an Episcopal priest himself, had written to Bell to tell him he was leaving the priesthood. Bell cautioned him against it, citing the case of Bell's friend Albert Jay Nock, who had done the same thing. Bell said that Nock was never again a happy man, adding "the priesthood, Alan, is forever." When Watts's The Watercourse Way was published sometime after his death, he was described in the introduction as taking another swallow of the vodka he had already had too much of." 

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