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New World Library 14 Pamaron Way Novato, California 94949 |
Copyright © 1940, 1968 by Alan W. Watts
Copyright © 2018 by Joan Watts and Anne Watts
All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, or other—without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.
Text design by Tona Pearce Myers
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Watts, Alan, 1915–1973, author.
Title: The meaning of happiness : the quest for freedom of the spirit in modern psychology and the wisdom of the East / Alan Watts.
Description: Novato : New World Library, 2018. | Originally published: New York : Harper & Brothers, c1940. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018019350| ISBN 9781608685400 (alk. paper) | ISBN 9781608685417 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Happiness. | Mysticism.
Classification: LCC BJ1481 .W37 2018 | DDC 158—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018019350
First New World Library printing, August 2018
ISBN 978-1-60868-540-0
Ebook ISBN 978-1-60868-541-7
Printed in Canada on 100% postconsumer-waste recycled paper
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New World Library is proud to be a Gold Certified Environmentally Responsible Publisher. Publisher certification awarded by Green Press Initiative. www.greenpressinitiative.org |
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CONTENTS
Preface to the Second (1952) Edition
Preface to Laymen and Specialists
I was two years old in 1940 when The Meaning of Happiness was originally published. I don’t remember ever reading the book or having a copy of it until just recently. My father, Alan Watts, was all of twenty-four years old when he wrote it, and my mother, Eleanor (his first wife), to whom he dedicated it, was barely twenty. The copy I have now is the second edition, published by James Ladd Delkin in 1953, and, ironically, inscribed to Alan’s third wife, Mary Jane, in 1959. I often wondered about the title of the book and whether he developed his theory on happiness to understand the depression and resulting unhappiness Eleanor dealt with throughout her life. He mentioned in his autobiography, In My Own Way, that Eleanor was involved in reading the manuscript and encouraged him to be honest and to really think through what he meant.
Alan, at the time, told his parents he was developing “a philosophy of acceptance” for a new book. The title then became The Anatomy of Acceptance, which the publisher, Harper, changed to The Meaning of Happiness. Reading it, I’ve tried to wrap my head around the fact that this man understood what he did about the human condition at the young age of twenty-four. He looks at happiness from every possible angle. His initial premise for the book was to address the question, “What do Eastern and Western psychology, taken together, have to say about the elusive and pressing subject of human happiness?” The concept of duality, a common theme in his writings, emerges here with the thesis that in order to experience happiness, one must suffer sadness and that such opposites eventually become complementary.
Alan wrote in a letter to his parents in June 1940, just two months after the book came out, “When I finished that book, I thought it reasonably free from inadequacies, but now, each week shows me another hole in it. There are things left unsaid and I say to myself, ‘There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy.’”
At the time he wrote this book, Alan admits he was somewhat under the influence of Carl Jung, but then notes a sense of inadequacy—that he, Alan, had in fact described a psychological process without any metaphysical foundation. In retrospect, Alan felt that Jung’s refusal to relate his psychology to any one system of metaphysics became his own book’s profound weakness.
Despite all that, my feeling is that The Meaning of Happiness is as timely in its philosophical premise as it was nearly eighty years ago. I leave subsequent interpretation to the reader.
Joan Watts
Livingston, Montana
June 2018
PREFACE TO THE SECOND (1952) EDITION
This book first appeared in the spring of 1940, at the very moment when the Second World War broke loose in all its violence. Despite the fact that it was published at that most inauspicious time and the fact that its title gave it the outward appearance of a type of “inspirational literature” far removed from its inner content, The Meaning of Happiness