Nature, Man and Woman

In Nature, Man and Woman, philosopher Alan Watts reexamines humanity's place in the natural worldand the relation between body and spiritin the light of Chinese Taoism. Western thought and culture have coalesced around a series of constructed ideasthat 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 seductionthat 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 universeone in which the distinctions between self and other, spirit and matter give way to a more holistic way of seeing.