What is love? Baby, don’t hurt me.

In this episode, Leigh, Ammon, and Shannon talk about love. What is love? Is it a feeling? Is it a cosmic or metaphysical force? Is it a primary motivating drive to propagate the species or to create ideas? Is it more about desire and our desire to be touched? Is romantic love as completion of the self through the other a good model for love or is this idea fundamentally damaging? How do different philosophies talk about what love is? What happens when love goes wrong? This episode has a number of great song clips from Hotel Bar Sessions own Dr. J and the hosts wax romantic about their favorite movie moments.

For further reading, check out the links below:

• Plato’s conception of eros as the drive to give birth to beautiful babies and ideas can be found in Diotima’s speech in the Symposium.
• Aristotle’s discussion of philia appears in Book 8 of The Nicomachean Ethics.
• The Chronicle in Higher Education discusses eros in the classroom.
• bell hooks offers a critique of romantic love as possessiveness in All About Love and advocates we think of love as a verb.
• Freud talks about love as the binding force of civilization in Civilization and its Discontents.
• For more on the concept of Ubuntu in Bantu Philosophy (“I am because you are”).
• Mpho Tshivhase writes about “Love as the Foundation of Ubuntu.”
• The 4 Brahma viharas in Buddhism promote loving kindness, compassion, equanimity and resonant joy.
• Confucian philosophy’s concept of Ren is ”human heartedness” or “authoritative conduct” is the highest virtue in Confucianism and reflects the interconnection of humans. See David Jones’ “Teaching/Learning through Confucius” for more.
• Alexander Moseley writes on the philosophy of love and Bennett Helm writes on Love.