Love’s meaning

Scholar and critic bell hooks argues that loving someone is not a matter of how you feel. Love is something you , on her view. It is active rather than passive: we choose to love, it’s not something that simply happens to us. hooks is inspired, in part, by Martin Luther King, who urged that “love is not this sentimental something that we talk about… not merely an emotional something”. I think hooks is importantly right in urging this active conception of love, and I want to connect her insight to a trend I keep love in particular.