Abstract

The joyous cosmology portrays our universe, and nature itself, as a world of positive value and meaning. Historically, the concept of a joyous cosmology probably starts with Stoic amor fati. It reappears in Nietzsche’s joyful wisdom. The exact phrase originates with Alan Watts, who used it to describe his psychedelic worldview. Here I want to use the phrase to describe an ecstatic and spiritual vision of our universe, based on our best current science. The joyous cosmology is a kind of spiritual naturalism. Here I sketch the metaphysics and the science behind the joyous cosmology, and use that sketch to develop a fairly detailed account of amor natura, the agape love of (and for) nature. I give a naturalistic account of the ecstatic meaning of mystical experience.