DE Weekly: Maybe, Watts, & the Parable of the Chinese Farmer
Last week, I shared some ideas from Taoism, the ancient Chinese philosophy that emphasizes living in harmony with all forces in the universe throughout your life. I then connected the ideas to the Existentialism of the twentieth century. This week, I would like to highlight a writer who drew from the former to inspire the latter: Alan Watts.
Alan Watts was a British and American writer who called himself a “philosophical entertainer” (a rather apt moniker, I might add). He made his name popularizing the aforementioned Taoist philosophy for Western audiences, as well as Buddhist, Hindu, and other Eastern ideas.
DE Weekly: Nagel, Irony, & the Backward Step
“Most people feel on occasion that life is absurd, and some feel it vividly and continually. Yet the reasons usually offered in defense of this conviction are patently inadequate: they could not really explain why life is absurd. Why then do they provide a natural expression for the sense that it is?”
This is the opening paragraph of Thomas Nagel’s 1971 essay “The Absurd.” Nagel is an American philosopher and University Professor of Philosophy and Law Emeritus at New York University. Among many other things, his body of work explores the philosophy of mind.