Bell Hooks All About Love

Improved Essays
Bell Hooks’ All About Love is a philosophical book that discusses love in modern day society. Freedom, love, and commitment are three topics where Hooks imbricates other ideas proposed by other philosophers discussed in our course. Her thought processes relate to Fromm, Frankl on two separate ideas, and also Tillich. Bell Hooks and Fromm are correlated due to their shared views on using freedom as a means to commit to something or someone. Fromm says in his book Escape From Freedom that committing to one pathway gives you all the freedom in the world on that path. Hooks discusses in All About Love how she believes commiting to a relationship is the key to true freedom. A relationship is an example of a pathway to commit to. Hooks points out that commitment may seem limiting, but the opposite is actually true. She goes on further to describe how if you are actually in love and committed, you have the freedom to be yourself and not put on a facade. Fromm is not the only author/philosopher we learned about in class that relates to Hooks, though. In Man’s Search for Meaning and All About Love, Frankl and Hooks’ views on love and suffering overlap heavily and are essentially the same. Hooks and Frankl both believe that love is the only way to fully comprehend one’s partner. In addition, Frankl focuses heavily on suffering, finding …show more content…
They each think that you fully invest yourself in your partner, then you give them the gift of fearlessness by eliminating all threats of loss. This makes that partner more confident in himself or herself. They also believe that being unafraid of death makes you love your life. They explain that embracing death allows you to interact with the world more openly; you are able hide feelings less and become more aware of the people around you. In other words, befriending mortality allows you to befriend vulnerability which gives you more openness, generosity, and ability to be a loving

Related Documents

  • Superior Essays

    Revered as the culmination of all his work, C.S. Lewis’ Till We Have Faces is the recipient of scholars’ praise and the author’s favoritism. Scholars praise Lewis for his ability to transform a narrow classical myth into a universally applicable story. While this universality owes itself to the fictitious nature of the novel, it is also rooted in the theme of love. In order to fully elucidate the concept of love as he understood it, Lewis published The Four Loves. He first distinguishes between two base forms of love: need-love and gift-love.…

    • 2400 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Robert Frost once said, “Love is the irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired.” This quote encapsulates a common human longing: to feel loved, to be understood by someone else. Everyone has experienced this feeling at some point, and this stays true for Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein; or the Modern Prometheus. The desire for love is found in many of her characters. Characters either search for, have, or lose love, and they act and feel differently based on which experience they have.…

    • 864 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Lyric Poem Fragment 31

    • 1299 Words
    • 6 Pages

    People have tried to describe love in many different ways throughout history. Thousands of years ago Sappho wrote many love poems to express the impression of falling in love. Her lyric poem fragment 31 is a specific example that presents the inconsistent and complex emotions of lovers. In this fragment, when the speaker discovers that her loved one was chatting with an unknown man, she develops mixed feelings toward the man and wonders about her own encounter with her loved one. The honesty and intimacy of the text encourages the audience to empathize with what love means to the lover.…

    • 1299 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Cormier, the author of the short story “Another of Mike’s Girls”, believed that love had a strong influence over the lives of those who are impacted by it. Not all love is romantic, and, often times, love is felt by a parent to their child. That kind of love, as mature as it may be, makes people as intransigent as the typical teen romance. Affection causes people to be irrational in their thinking, but it also can consume people. It can bring people up to the point”…of triumph and pride,” but it can also damage spirits and ”…lack motivation.”…

    • 903 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Final Analytical and Research Essay Through the writings of poetry and storytelling, love and relationships have been a singular theme. Many poets and storytellers will use writing to tell love in different scenarios, from the depths of Hell where one’s lust of love causes eternal damnation to a love tale of two knights. Love has no boundaries and in most cases love is told from two perspectives. One from a male’s perspective and one from a female. This style of writing is used many times throughout many tales.…

    • 1956 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “Love is so elusive that it can seem like the quest to find it will never end.” —Anonymous. As humans, we know it exists because our surroundings displays it, but although the journey may be gloomy, we fall into the temptation of scrutinizing every corner of the earth in search of Love until one has reached a sense of contentment of what Love is about. Whether it is forced, a deceptive or authentic Love, it is still desired to feel the idea of the reputation of Love. The yearn of affection, reassurance, or even feeling wanted is humane and drives people to explore the different emotions it may cause. Zora Neale Hurston exhibits these examples in her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God.…

    • 602 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    The texts Plato Symposium and Sappho, Selected Poems discuss the topic of love as experienced by a select few of society- and thus reject the notion that love is a universal human experience. Through this essay, love will be examined as it pertains to each text and then these ideas will be observed to understand how they reject the notion that love is a universal human experience. Set in ancient Greece, Plato’s work titled Symposium presents his view that love can only be experienced by men and boys -through various speeches given by characters who are giving eulogies on love. Although many different ideas are presented through the speeches, one common theme holds true throughout all seven speeches: not once is the notion of real and virtuous…

    • 1841 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Love is everywhere. From era to era love has remained a constant and influential force. For decades philosophers all over the world have pondered what love is, force or being, and how it affects people. Among these were Plato and his associates. Throughout Platos Symposium each of his companions gave a speech either glorifying or defining love, each building or destroying what the previous speaker portrayed.…

    • 1199 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “Whats Love Got To Do With It”? A legendary song of the twentieth century and a well-fit slogan for the eighteenth century. Looking into the roots of our ancestors and the maltreatment of love has made me think of the recent generations definition of love and also the meaning of marriage. Today’s meaning of marriage include a deep and profound love between two people. Surprisingly it was nothing of what I had imagined.…

    • 684 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    “There I was, way off my ambitions, getting deeper in love every minute.” A person who is ‘perfect’ does not become obsessive, does not fail, does not sin, and so does not exist. We fall, rise and hopefully learn from our mistakes. Imperfections are traits that characterise us as human beings. The quotation above, taken from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel…

    • 1015 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Social philosopher Erich Fromm formed a definition of love that is simple, yet comprehensive. He broke love into four connected but distinct elements: respect, care, knowledge, and responsibility (hooks 19). These forms can exist on their own, but when authentic and genuine love is practiced, the four must exist together. We must, at the very least, respect others. Often times, when a relationship is established, we go above that basic respect and care for others.…

    • 1624 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Essay On Lovestory

    • 546 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Book Report on “LOVESTORY” Lovestory, is a novel for all the romantic heads. It is a story of two college students, oliver and Jennifer,who madly fall in love with each other and get married several days after graduation. Oliver, the Harvard hockey player, is at times short-tempered and impulsive but at other times extremely emotional and sensitive. For instance, in the beginning chapters, Oliver receives a penalty from the referee after insulting Canadian players from Cornell University. This lack of judgment in part causes Harvard to lose in the championship game.…

    • 546 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The Liberating Marriage and Partnership chapter (Feminism is for everybody) by Bell Hooks we are given an introduction into the feminist movement with regards to marriage and partnership. Hooks brings her view on the role of feminism and marriage into light as she walks us through the early feminist movement and the impact it had on marriages and partnerships. She argues that man’s view on women must change in order for the patriarchal view on marriage to reform. First of all, one of the most important ideas in the feminist movement was the one based around the idea that women should be free to do what they choose with their bodies. “Contemporary feminists, both those heterosexual women who had come from long-time marriages and lesbian allies…

    • 893 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    We all poses emotions. Sometimes these emotions are good for us as they enable us to feel, while other times, these emotions hinder our ability to think clearly and rationally. One such emotion that can have such an effect on all humans is love. Love makes us feel special and provides us with a goal that we then strive towards. However, love can also cloud our judgment and not cee the entire truth.…

    • 1041 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    But based on what I believe today, I find that death secretly excites me. It is no longer some unknown void that keeps me awake at night, half curious and half afraid – but something to look forward to at the end of a life well-lived. This does not mean that I want to end my own life, because I feel very blessed to be alive with the opportunity to learn and to help others. It also doesn’t mean that I won’t grieve when others die, or that I won’t be afraid as a patient facing imminent death.…

    • 1005 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays