What role do you think that the teachings of the various philosophers we’ve discussed over the course of the semester so far may have played in developing the supposed misconceptions and unhealthy ideas about love that hooks describes?

In her book All About Love, bell hooks claims that the contemporary United States is experiencing a “crisis of love”–that is, that the majority of people cannot articulate what love is or identify healthy patterns of loving. She suggests that many of the misconceptions and misunderstandings about love that people have are rooted in the way they were treated as children and how love, care, respect, etc were handled in their family environments growing up.
What role do you think that the teachings of the various philosophers we’ve discussed over the course of the semester so far may have played in developing the supposed misconceptions and unhealthy ideas about love that hooks describes? How can we trace the writings of influential philosophers like Aristotle, Rousseau, Wollstonecraft, Aquinas, Freud etc to the issues with the “culture of love” that hooks talks about?

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