She also notes, “To truly love we must learn to mix various ingredients- care, affection, recognition, respect, commitment, and trust, as well as honest and open communication.” If the religious connotations of the word “spiritual” is a deterrent to you, it is not meant to be associated with the strict orthodoxy of the Church but rather the union of body, mind, and soul as an animating force. Love, in the sense it is being used here, is active. Scott Peck and Eric Fromm, as the will to nurture one’s own or another’s spiritual growth. So let’s clarify: when bell hooks is speaking of love, she is defining it, largely based on definitions created by M. This failure in communication is keeping us from having productive discussions about the ethics of love. Love consistently asks us to choose life and accept the vast amount of change that elicits growth.Ī barrier, that hooks points out, to better knowing and practicing love is the confusion around what we mean when we use the term “love.” There is no concrete definition that is being used by society as a collective so we are often speaking of “love” unrealized that we are referring to different things.

So, I knew there would be a lot for me to learn within the pages of bell hook’s book All About Love when one of the first lines is her proclamation that, “Contemplating death has always been a subject that leads me back to love.” Love is an existential issue and it is not something that one should assume they understand by default but, rather, a topic that deserves to have a considerable amount of time spent working to better understand. Which, on the surface, is a fun and light-hearted topic yet these explorations always naturally turn into time spent reading about and trying to understand death.

Since I study philosophy and theology, I spend a lot of time thinking about and exploring the nuances of love. This is an intentional choice as she wants the focus to be on her ideas and not on herself as a person. One might have noticed by this point that bell hooks does not have her name capitalized. ) Her cultural criticism and writings have contributed largely to a better understanding of feminism, intersectionality, the experience of being Black, and the ethics of love. (Personally, I enjoy and recommend this video by the creator Sisyphus55 as a good starting point. If bell hooks isn’t a name you recognize, it should be one you familiarize yourself with.

Love by bell hooks