Few writers have done more to reshape how we talk about love than bell hooks. In her 2000 book All About Love: New Visions, the scholar, author, and activist set out to clear away the confusion that surrounds one of the most used and least understood words in any language. Her definition of love is famously precise, and it has resonated with readers for decades. This article explores what bell hooks’ definition of love actually is, why it matters, and how it changes the way we think about relationships.
The Core Definition of Love
hooks begins by defining love as “the will to extend one’s self to nurture one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.” That sentence is the heart of her entire philosophy of love. Every other idea in All About Love connects back to it. The definition stands out because it is not about romance, passion, or even attraction. It is about action, intention, and growth.
The phrase “one’s own or another’s” is important. It means love is not only something we give to other people. We can also love ourselves. Self-love, in hooks’ view, is not selfishness. It is the same kind of nurturing attention that we offer to someone else, directed inward. Spiritual growth is the goal, and love is the means by which that growth happens.
Love Is an Act of Will, Not a Feeling
Most people define love as a feeling. hooks argues that this is a misunderstanding with serious consequences. If love is a feeling, then it is something that happens to us. It arrives without warning and it can leave without explanation. That leaves us feeling powerless.
hooks rejects that idea. For her, love is an act of will. It is something we choose to do. As she puts it, love is “the will to extend one’s self for the purpose of nurturing one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.” Love is an act of will, namely both an intention and a choice. This means love is available to anyone who decides to practice it, regardless of the moods and emotions that come and go.
This shift has a profound effect on relationships. When love depends on feelings, we stop loving the moment we stop feeling affectionate. When love depends on will, we keep loving even when the feeling fades, because love is a commitment to the well-being of another person. hooks describes love as a choice and a commitment to care for another’s well-being. That commitment holds steady when feelings fluctuate, which makes love far more reliable than emotion alone.
The Six Components of Love
To make her definition practical, hooks breaks love down into a combination of qualities that can be cultivated. When we see love as a combination of trust, commitment, care, respect, knowledge, and responsibility, we can work on it in concrete ways. Each element supports the others, and together they form a fuller picture of what love looks like in daily life.
| Component | What It Brings to Love |
|---|---|
| Trust | The confidence that another person’s intentions are good and honest. |
| Commitment | The decision to stay present and invested over time. |
| Care | The active attention we give to another person’s needs. |
| Respect | The recognition of another person’s worth and boundaries. |
| Knowledge | The effort to truly know the person we love. |
| Responsibility | The willingness to respond to another person’s needs reliably. |
These six components give us a way to measure real love. They also give us a way to evaluate relationships that might only feel like love. If trust is broken, if respect is missing, if knowledge is absent, then whatever else is present, it does not meet the standard hooks sets.
Love Is a Verb: Practice Over Feeling
One of the most memorable ideas from All About Love is that love is a verb. This follows directly from the idea that love is an act of will. It is something we do, not something that happens to us. Love is an active choice, a commitment to nurture our own or someone else’s spiritual growth.
To love is to extend ourselves. That means we go beyond our comfort zone. We offer attention, time, and energy. We show up. We make sacrifices to show that we care. In fact, a common way to describe hooks’ definition of love is that when you love someone, you are there for them no matter what, and you make sacrifices to show that you care for them.
This is why hooks says love is a choice we make again and again. It is not a single dramatic declaration. It is a practice repeated daily. Every interaction is an opportunity to love or to fail to love. That is the demanding and beautiful truth at the center of her work.
The Purpose of All About Love
All About Love: New Visions was published in 2000. In the book, hooks deconstructs modern understandings of love while dispelling misconceptions about what love is and what it is not. She looks at the way popular culture confuses love with intensity, possession, and need. She also examines the role that lovelessness plays in society and argues that a return to real love could transform the way we live together.
hooks is the pseudonym of Gloria Jean Watkins, who lived from 1952 to 2021. Her work consistently addressed the intersections of race, gender, and class, and All About Love is part of a larger body of writing that links personal experience to social structure. She believed that love is not just a private matter. It is a public good, and the lack of it has social consequences.
The Transformative Power of Love
hooks wanted readers to take love seriously. She believed we can buy into the transformative power of love. She asks us to consider what would happen if we turned our attention toward loving more deliberately, both in our personal lives and in our communities.
The promise of hooks’ definition of love is that it is not reserved for the lucky or the romantic. Anyone can choose to love. Anyone can learn to extend themselves for the spiritual growth of another person. The work is hard, and it requires constant attention, but the reward is a life organized around connection, care, and mutual growth rather than fear and lack.
Her definition also offers a remedy for confusion. When someone asks what love is, we do not have to reach for vague feelings or movie scenes. We have a working answer: love is the will to extend one’s self to nurture one’s own or another’s spiritual growth. That answer gives us a way to measure our actions and correct our course when we drift away from love.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is bell hooks’ definition of love?
bell hooks defines love as “the will to extend one’s self to nurture one’s own or another’s spiritual growth.” She argues that love is not a feeling but an act of will, meaning it is both an intention and a choice. This definition appears in her 2000 book All About Love: New Visions.
Why does bell hooks say love is a verb?
hooks says love is a verb because it is something we do, not something that happens to us. Love is an active choice, a commitment to nurture our own or another person’s spiritual growth. Treating love as a verb pushes us to act with care and intention instead of waiting for a feeling to arrive.
What are the components of love in All About Love?
hooks describes love as a combination of trust, commitment, care, respect, knowledge, and responsibility. These six elements work together to make love real and practical. When one element is missing, love becomes harder to recognize and much harder to sustain.
Who was bell hooks?
bell hooks was the pseudonym of Gloria Jean Watkins, a scholar, author, and activist who lived from 1952 to 2021. Her work addressed the intersections of race, gender, and class. She wrote extensively about love as a social and personal force, most notably in All About Love: New Visions, published in 2000.