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The Essence of Love in bell hooks’ philosophy

An open book with its pages folded in a heart shape.

While reading bell hooks’ ‘all about love: new visions’, I was greatly impressed by how she defined love and how she interwove her academic background and personal experience with the subject. Like bell hooks and many others, I have always been interested in love. Love as a means of living, or rather as a will to live. The world is shaped by love with love. But like bell hooks, I have always been reluctant to talk about love. This uncertainty about talking about love seems to be rooted in society. Of course, we have films, novels and self-help books. But when do we really talk about love? What it means, what it does, how it works… When I came across bell hooks’ book, I was enchanted by her view of love and began to search for different meanings of love, philosophies about love and how I perceive love around me.

When we talk about love, we hardly ever talk about what we mean by love. In philosophy, love has been a much-discussed topic since the ancient Greeks. Philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle and Homer shaped the Western idea of love. They distinguished between different types of love, ranging from the physical aspect of love (passion) to love as a spiritual matter. In her book, hooks did not discuss the philosophical classics. Instead, she used psychological books and self-help books. She uses the definition from M. Scott Peck’s book The Road Less Travelled: ‘the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth’. The desire to expand your own self for the purpose of nurturing your own or someone else’s spiritual growth. This definition is, of course, still rooted in the theories of philosophers. However, hooks does not distinguish between different types of love. This definition of love is intended for every form of love. This definition is therefore not a description of love itself. It is a definition of the value of love.

This definition addresses several issues. First, that love is an act of desire. It is both an intention and an action. This definition implies a choice. Love is not an instinct. We make a choice to nurture growth. By defining love as an action and a choice, it automatically carries responsibility and accountability. As I reflected on this part of the definition, my thoughts wandered to my parents, who seem to find responsibility and accountability difficult. Truth, as hooks says, is difficult for people (and often men) who have been taught from an early age not to express their true feelings. Yet it is precisely this honesty and truth that forms the basis for a loving life. Hooks explains that men create a false masculine self in such early childhood. This means a false identity to mask fears and insecurities, which leads them to forget who they are and what they feel. This inability to feel or express what they feel often makes them feel as if they have no choice. The midlife crisis is an example of (mostly) men who suddenly feel the urge to do ‘whatever they want’. During this process, they make themselves victims by blaming others for their own inability to show their emotions.

The shift from “victimhood” to “earning” is then lurking. The right to earn something in exchange for being nice or participating in society is an increasingly common concept. It is a kind of survival, but it never gets to the core of what living can be. For example, “incels”, forced celibates, also use this rhetoric by claiming that they deserve sex because they are nice to women. These men become aggressive when denied sex they believe they are owed. This can take very serious forms, such as femicide.2 Becoming aggressive is a means for men to express their emotions, because their true feelings of pain or sadness are suppressed. Lying and pretending (or, as Butler puts it, gender performing) is so deeply rooted in patriarchal society that it causes people to lose their minds. In a sense, these people are indeed victims, but not of life or feminists or the government. They are victims of patriarchy, by lying to themselves and creating the false masculine self with the accompanying expectation that women also live according to “their” patriarchal role. I see a strong connection between pretending to be someone you are not and the rhetoric of victimhood. In boys, this manifests itself in anger, because from an early age they are often silenced when they express their truth and feelings, which can also lead to other mental health issues.

All right, now back to love. Because that was the subject (wasn’t it?). The absence of love is dangerous. Choosing to give love, to someone else or to yourself, is very difficult if you don’t know what it feels like and especially if society doesn’t value it at all. That’s why self-love is so important. Self-love, in the sense of nurturing growth, can mean growing in your ability to accept and love yourself. There is no ‘finish line’ for self-love, so it does not mean that you must ‘first’ be completely accepting of yourself before you start anything else, or that a week in Ibiza will give you the answer to loving yourself forever. It is about the journey you see for yourself, the growth you can achieve. This also applies to the people you love: nurturing someone’s growth by extending yourself, as it were.

Defining love, describing love, talking about love—it’s not easy. We live in a world where it’s relatively easy to pretend to be someone else, by being anonymous or by pretending to have a wonderful life on social media; true love seems unattainable. People shut out their true selves or are afraid to show it to others. Truth is the basis of love, but in an era of social media with fake news, filter bubbles and short attention spans, it is becoming more difficult to find the truth. In this individualised world, it may be easier to not conform to traditional roles and to be yourself completely. However, it is more difficult to extend yourself to nurture someone else’s growth. And especially when your identity is constantly shaping you may need someone to nurture your growth.

I don’t want to end on a negative note in an essay about love. There are also many counter-movements that give cause for hope. The hip-hop industry, for example, is a domain known for its hypermasculinity. But some artists are breaking through this and showing their vulnerability. They rap about masculinity, femininity, their true feelings and struggles. Topics such as feminism, LGBTQIA+ and toxic masculinity are all subjects that are not swept under the carpet. Lil Nas X is open about his sexuality and actively challenges various stereotypes, and Kendrick Lamar’s honest album about him and his family life is a refreshing turn in his career. I could name many more: Little Simz, Dave, iLoveMakonnen, and many others. Even though the hip-hop industry is a subculture, for me it is an example of how society can change by being honest and open-minded.

Let us hope that the world chooses the path of love rather than the opposite. We must take ownership of the lives we lead and want to lead. This means we must be honest and take responsibility for the choices we make. It requires reflection and love; love for yourself and love for others. Then, and perhaps only then, can we begin to build a better world.

1 Of course, there are many reasons for a midlife crisis, but it usually boils down to the feeling that you have missed out on all kinds of opportunities. Women also experience midlife crises, but these are often associated with the menopause, a drastic hormonal change that men do not undergo.

2 Femicide, the murder of women because they are women, is a major problem worldwide and also in the Netherlands. In 60% of cases involving women murdered in the Netherlands between 2017 and 2021, the (presumed) perpetrator was the (ex)partner. Among men, this figure was 5%.https://atria.nl/nieuws-publicaties/geweld-tegen-vrouwen/wat-is-femicide/

An article about the mental state of “incels”: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/bjpsych-advances/article/incels-violence-and-mental-disorder-a-narrative-review-with-recommendations-for-best-practice-in-risk-assessment-and-clinical-intervention/6A934637D21AEE4C1D90FAF5FB63D769.

3 There are some interesting articles written about the phenomenon of men not being able to express their emotions properly. The high number of suicides among men is linked to gender roles. For example: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/talking-about-men/202109/the-silent-crisis-male-suicide

4 “Rage Becomes Her’, Soraya Chemaly, is a brilliant book on this topic.

5 Hypermasculinity in hip hop is a topic that is often discussed, but one that I will not delve into deeply here. There are many studies on this subject, particularly on black masculinity and its roots in a racist society. For interesting reading on this topic, I refer you to:

  • hooks, b. We real cool: Black men and masculinity. New York and London: Routledge, 2004. 
  • A short article on the topic: Nedhari, Aza. 2009. In Search of Manhood: The Black Male’s Struggle for Identity and Power. Inquiries Journal/Student Pulse 1 (11), http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/a?id=32

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