What Love Is: And What It Could Be

by Carrie Jenkins

What is love? Aside from being the title of many a popular love song, this is one of life’s perennial questions. In What Love Is, philosopher Carrie Jenkins offers a bold new theory on the nature of romantic love that reconciles its humanistic and scientific components. Love can be a social construct (the idea of a perfect fairy-tale romance) and a physical manifestation (those anxiety-inducing heart palpitations); we must recognize its complexities and decide for ourselves how to love. Motivated by her own polyamorous relationships, she examines the ways in which our parameters of love have recently changed—to be more accepting of homosexual, interracial, and non-monogamous relationships—and how they will continue to evolve in the future. Full of anecdotal, cultural, and scientific reflections on love, What Love Is is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand what it means to say “I love you.” Whether young or old, gay or straight, male or female, polyamorous or monogamous, this book will help each of us decide for ourselves how we choose to love.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Relationships, Love, Psychology, Polyamory, Sexuality

1 pages, Audio CD

Published March 1, 2021

Reviews

[kaelan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had high hopes for this one. Carrie Jenkins—an analytic metaphysician with a background in mathematical logic—writing on an obviously important topic that had hitherto been ignored by the academic philosophical community.

Unfortunately, What Love Is fails to deliver. While philosophy has a long and venerable history of balancing the esoteric with the exoteric (see Plato, Russell, etc.), this book seems to mark the worst of both worlds. Jenkins writes in a quasi-colloquial tone, citing nursery rhymes and TED talks alongside academic journal articles. Yet such "low culture" excursions largely fail to clarify her points. For instance, she spends an entire paragraph on the metaphor of love as "a cocktail of chemicals":

[I]f love is a cocktail, it has no single, strict recipe. It's better conceived of as a family of cocktails. Consider daiquiris. You'd expect to find a few basic ingredients in a daiquiri: some kind of rum, some sort of citrus juice (usually lime), and some sort of sweetener (usually sugar). But individual daiquiris vary the ratio, and some include other ingredients like strawberries or bananas. Other daiquiris get creative and replace the rum with another spirit.

Much of What Love Is reads in this vein: wordy, glib and vaguely patronizing. (It doesn't help that neurotransmitters in no way function like cocktails or cocktail ingredients.)

On a philosophical level, Jenkins' central thesis—that love "is ancient biological machinery embodying a modern social role"—remains frustratingly underdeveloped. For instance, she doesn't always clearly differentiate her theory from more straight-ahead biological accounts. Why not say that love is strictly biological but that people tend to ascribe it false properties? This in turn could raise some interesting philosophy of language-type questions of reference, akin to the debate in epistemological circles vis-à-vis "capital-K" and "small-k" varieties of knowledge.*

That is, what do we really mean/refer to when we talk about love? Or alternatively, why adopt/care about this particular formulation of love? Which raises the related question: why does love matter to us in the first place?

Jenkins also fails to adequately canvass the various rivals to her view. Which is a shame, because some of them look quite interesting. Like, why not subscribe to a phenomenologically-based yet biologically-grounded theory of love, under which love represents a particular feeling brought about by some combination of brain chemicals?** Such a theory could potentially encompass aliens with non-human neurobiology but who nonetheless act like humans in love. (According to Jenkins, these aliens could never be in love under the biological approach.)

At the end of the day, Jenkins tells us that love is a little bit biological and a little bit socially constructed, but that it can be hard to tell the difference. This strikes me as a pretty obvious claim. But as William James once said, all great philosophies have faced the charge of triviality at one point or another.

*Many epistemologists endorse a reliablist theory of knowledge, according to which knowledge needn't entail certainty. Yet the philosopher Peter Unger has pointed out that it seems rather absurd to say, "I know that p but I could be wrong."

**Such a phenomenological account of love could draw upon the present debates surrounding materialist theories of consciousness. Under some of these theories, consciousness depends upon certain physical structures, although these structures need not be biological in nature (see, for instance, the "silicon brain" project).

[Dedeker Winston · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a long-time practitioner of non-monogamy, it is so refreshing to delve into a book with a philosophical focus rather than a pragmatic one. Jenkins handles the deconstruction of romantic love thoroughly, courageously, and with a touch of humor. Regardless of one's relationship format, this book provides a wonderful opportunity for self-inquiry and examination of long-held and often unquestioned beliefs. I recommend this to anyone who loves having long, exploratory conversations about the nature of relationships, sex, marriage, and, of course, love.

[Nathan "N.R." Gaddis]

This is the book you all have been asking for. A thoughtful pamphlet on a subject of great interest to many of us written in the popular style by a polyamorous female philosopher.

[Vicki Larson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Is love purely biological? Is it just a social construct? Is it both? Is it a mystery better left unexplored? University of British Columbia philosophy professor Carrie Jenkins delves into this thing called love with an open mind and heart, and encourages us to explore it for ourselves. As she says, love is an extreme sport with the ability to devastate us. We should at least be curious about what love means to us and society as well, especially if we don't fit into the love "script." This highly readable book will make you think, and — hopefully — consciously choose your own love path.

[Chris Meinke · Rating 5 out of 5]

As deliberately obtuse as works of philosophy can be What Love Is is a refreshingly accessible and fun read. Carrie Jenkins explores "romantic love" what it is, how it has evolved, and what it can become. Starting with the rather sparse coverage love has gotten from the philosophical cannon, Carrie Jenkins also explores love's biological and sociological underpinnings. She goes on to build her own dual theory of the ontology of love complete with references and allusions to Star Trek and Buffy the Vampire Slayer - did I mention how accessible and fun her writing is?

Of course she also brings into the work her own experience as a woman in a polyamorous relationship with two men, questioning the limits of our current ideas about romantic love - and generating a fair amount of controversy and press. Honestly though, this probably makes Carrie Jenkins more qualified to tackle the philosophy of love as her mostly traditional white male predecessors readily accepted and never challenged many of the societal norms associated with romantic love. Philosophy, after all, is all about asking questions and challenging assumptions.

What Love Is is a delicious appetizer setting the plate for thoughtful conversations about the philosophy of love, challenging our preconceptions, and opening a door to what love can become.

[Joli Hamilton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating, digestible philosophy- what more could I ask? Jenkins introduces philosophical tools and concepts through the engaging topic of love. The flow of her argument gently guided me into deep waters while providing ample support to understand how I could take apart the artifacts of my own life to examine love as a human construction and a biological reality. An excellent read all around!

[Skye Cleary]

Check out my review at LA Review of Books

[Sharad Pandian · Rating 2 out of 5]

I like Carrie Jenkins. From her book she seems nice, smart, thoughtful, and genuinely humble and open to discussing things. I also think she's very brave to be so open about her polyamorous life and difficulties, and for enduring the trolls she no doubt has to encounter constantly.

But while her book certainly makes some good arguments and raises some good points, it's also pushing a particular agenda really hard which she's never explicit enough about, making this entire enterprise somewhat unconvincing.


I. Two uses of wonder

Maybe a good place to begin is the epigraph right at the beginning of the book:

This sense of wonder is the mark of the philosopher. Philosophy indeed has no other origin, and he was a good genealogist who made Iris the daughter of Thaumas.
—Plato, Theaetetus

This is beautiful, but it's also ambivalent. You can either read it as saying wonder is the origin of philosophy or that it is the nature of a philosopher to possess and revel in a sense of wonder. These don't have to be mutually exclusive, but the first opens up the possibility of a field of inquiry that aims to simply answer all the questions, dot each i and cross each t, and bring an end to sense of wonder. Meanwhile the latter seeks to inquire into but not disrupt the wonderous nature of what's being studied.

Jenkins seems to fall solidly within the first camp:

The romantic mystique, as I see it, has a lot in common with the feminine mystique. The romantic mystique tells us that romantic love is also “mysterious and intuitive and close to the creation and origin of life,” yet special and wonderful (partly for that very reason). The romantic mystique likewise encourages us to accept love’s “nature,” passively and uncomprehendingly, instead of trying to resist or alter it. It is a disempowering ideology that celebrates ignorance and acquiescence.

And

Isn’t there something intellectually comforting about the idea that science can finally tell us what love really is? Isn’t it reassuring to think we might finally get some answers, through the application of tried and trusted experimental methods, to our deepest and most perplexing questions about love? It is to me.

I raise this in part to point out a difference in how she and I approach love, but this also becomes a serious problem for her later (as I'll argue below).


II. On biology, a little that's good and a lot that's misleading

The first part of the book is pretty great, and it involves her noticing and trying to deal with both the biological and social dimensions of love. She points out that we all have brains with their basic chemistry pretty much constant throughout human history, and so we should take what science tells us seriously. But there is a need to be careful about what science actually tells us and not let our biased assumptions let us read what we want into the scientific results.

She points out, for instance, that Helen Fisher argues that bipedalism in humans meant women had to carry children in their arms instead of on their backs, and this made them vulnerable, creating the need for a protective mate. In response, Jenkins points out that Fisher herself estimates that the bipedalism evolved some 3.5 million years ago, while romantic love arose only 1.8 to 1 million years ago. This suggests that women managed just fine for at least 1.5 million years in the middle without this need for a mate. She also points out that there might have been many other solutions to this need, including the creation of a sling and cooperative child rearing. I don't find these entirely convincing (pointing to counterfactual possibilities doesn't mean something didn't actually happen), but Jenkins does kick up enough dust to render the more imperialistic reductive biological views of love suspect.

But Jenkins still wants to hold on to a biological understanding of love, and far as I can see, this means just acknowledging that specific hormones like dopamine, oxytocin, vasopressin, and cortisol are released when people feel attraction to each other. She argues that if we ignore this biological basis for love and hold on to only a social conception, then lots of phenomena would be hard to explain.

She proposes her own account of how love should be seen as both biological and social:

I propose a new theory of romantic love. At its core is the idea that romantic love has a dual nature: it is ancient biological machinery embodying a modern social role...[Its] social function [is] to take as input the attraction and affection that arises between adults and produce as output something resembling the nucleus of a nuclear family.

She offers the metaphor of seeing an actor play a character and how we're able to juggle between thinking about the actor and the character without thinking we're failing to understand something. Similarly, she wants us to recognize both the social and biological perspectives as joint. Unfortunately, when you think about her particular definition, a particular criticism she makes of others appears to apply to her too:

The third common strategy is simply to state that love is both biology and society without doing anything to resolve the appearance of contradiction this creates.

To see why I think this applies to her, consider one of her examples she gives that she thinks shows love's biological nature:

Consider, for example, the situation of a lesbian couple in late-nineteenth-century England. Suppose they are in love biologically speaking: the parts of their brains associated with romantic love are active, and they are under the influence of oxytocin, dopamine, and so on. But social norms severely curtail their ability to engage in any of the kinds of bonding associated with romantic love.

According to this, the "biological" aspects of love like hormone hits are culturally-independent, they'll always be present regardless of social conditions. She pretty clearly wants to use this framework to advocate for accepting polyamory too, because polyamorous people also would presumably be feeling love without being able to act upon it.

But homosexuality is clearly not the only example that can be brought up. In an incredibly racist society, for example, we can reasonably expect a lot of people from different races, who would have felt attraction in non-racist societies, to not feel love. This suggests that the relationship between the social and biological is more complex that she's willing to let on, because the social can affect the biological itself, even if imperfectly. This suggests that her view of love doesn't really seem as robust as we might initially think.

Moreover, even if we think homosexuality is somehow hard-wired and immutable, the case for bisexuals and the polyamorous is far from settled. So when she says:

In the same way [as homosexuality], society’s insistence on the one-true-love-forever model can’t, and won’t, shut down the neurochemistry of all the people who fall in love with a new person after promising themselves to an existing partner or of all the people who grow bored of long-term monogamous romance with their spouses. We can keep trying to retrain the biological actor by diagnosing these individuals with a medical problem and attempting to “cure” their desire for others or their chronic boredom. Or we can reconsider the failing social norm.

It really is dishonest, because even if it can't shut down the neurochemistry of all people, it might for many or even most. We simply don't know if the number of people who would even feel love non-monogomously within the norm of lifelong monogamy would be the same as the number in a culture without the norm of lifelong monogamy. Her argument is made exceptionally weak, when she claims that "high and rising divorce rates suggest that the one-true-love-forever model is not sustainable as a universal norm" since the divorce rate peaked decades ago and has been falling (although non-continuously) since. She's clearly pushing an agenda, which would be fine if she weren't doing it misleadingly. Ultimately, while I think it's good for philosophers to clarify the relationship between the social and biological, I really don't know whether Jenkins has taken us forward in anyway.


III. Is that all love is?

Jenkins claims to be a metaphysician, so I assumed that her conception of love as

ancient biological machinery embodying a modern social role...[Its] social function [is] to take as input the attraction and affection that arises between adults and produce as output something resembling the nucleus of a nuclear family.

was an account of what love really is. But this immediately poses a problem. When someone says "I love you" to another person, are they really saying "my ancient biological machinery wants to embody a modern social role which will eventually output a nuclear family"? This indicates that Jenkins is trying to give an understanding of love which is supposed to better analyze love that the traditional first-person way. But this means leaving out of her analysis valuable aspects of love that might not be visible when considering only the third-person biological and social.

So while she mentions the "union view",

Nozick was also philosophically interested in romantic love, which he thought of as a desire for a certain kind of union with another person...Russell himself doesn’t explicitly say union is the defining characteristic of love, but he certainly thinks it is one of love’s important features: he writes that love “breaks down the hard walls of the ego, producing a new being composed of two in one.” He acknowledges the fear of losing one’s own individuality in the process of becoming part of a “new being,” but he calls this fear “foolish,” since “individuality is not an end in itself,” and the loss of separateness is actually required for a satisfying life. Love, for Russell, is “the best thing that life has to give.”

she immediately ignores this union view and jumps into a criticism of the last line alone, according to which love is necessary for a good life:

This sentiment might sound sweet, even cute. But it’s not. A word recently coined by philosopher Elizabeth Brake describes Russell’s attitude here: amatonormativity. Amatonormativity says that romantic love is the normal or ideal condition for a human life, so lives that don’t include it are imperfect or abnormal. Russell’s amatonormative attitude becomes especially pronounced when he says that those who haven’t experienced mutual sexual love “cannot attain their full stature, and cannot feel towards the rest of the world that kind of generous warmth without which their social activities are pretty sure to be harmful.” He says, “The resulting disappointment inclines them towards envy, oppression and cruelty.” This is a horrible—and untrue—thing to say.

There's two things to note here. The first is that Jenkins has completely evaded the pretty strong point that a valuable aspect of love is union, a disruption of the lonely and separate sense of self. She might want to argue that multiple unions are possible, maybe because the psyche is fragmented and context-variant, or that a single union isn't as valuable as it's made out to be. But by ignoring it, she ignores a pretty big part of what people think makes love valuable. This later lets her say stuff like:

Romantic love has always been intimately connected with the idea that people—especially women—are a kind of private property. It has been a powerful tool in the enforcement of class structures, racist segregation, and homophobic oppression. Are we sure we want to keep it around?

but the only reason this even sounds plausible in context is because she's left out everything good about love. There are other books which attack love, for example Against Love: A Polemic, but Kipnis admits that hers is a polemic right on the cover. Jenkins just portrays her book as "an exercise in critical thinking out loud" so she can't just use that excuse.

Second, Russel's claim about the necessity of love to a good life might be too strong, but there's a perfectly legitimate view according to which all things being equal, a life with love is better without. Or even stronger, a life without love is very likely to be not good. As Hairspray teaches us, without love, "life is like the seasons with no summer" and "life is rock 'n' roll without a drummer". If these are also amatonormative positions, they might still be horrible, but not necessarily untrue. Jenkins needs to actually make her case.


IV. A consumerist love

To return to the initial section, the reason I think Jenkins' removal of wonder entirely from love is bad is because without a sense of smallness, of respecting the givenness of love, there is bound to be a drive to mastery (See The Case Against Perfection: Ethics in the Age of Genetic Engineering for this general argument). It shows when Jenkins lays out her view of love:

I think we are capable of striking the necessary balance [of change vs caution]: changing what needs to change without destroying romantic love entirely. Here’s how. Romantic love, at the social level, could have the function of taking as input attraction and affection between adults (not necessarily a particular number or of particular genders) and outputting intimate bonds and relationships that are special and significant in people’s lives. Optional add-ons can then include sex, kids, home building, family building, agreeing not to enter into other relationships, caring for a dog together, writing love poems … whatever floats the boat of the people in the boat. These optional extras would work like a buffet: people would be free to decide on the features they wanted in their own relationships without facing stigma for what they did or didn’t choose. And they would be free to switch it up over time, going back to the buffet to add something new to their plates or remove something they didn’t like.

This...sounds pretty bleak to me. The idea that love can involve a union greater than its parts, something that aims to be a common framework joining people that is accepted as binding, and can be taken for granted while the people within it grow together, is all lost. The sentiment that Joan Didion expresses at the death of her husband would be impossible under this understanding:

This will not be a story in which the death of the husband or wife becomes what amounts to the credit sequence for a new life, a catalyst for the discovery that (a point typically introduced in such accounts by the precocious child of the bereaved) “you can love more than one person.” Of course you can, but marriage is something different. Marriage is memory, marriage is time.

Of course its not a logical necessity that a Jenkins-style philosopher can't mourn deeply in this way, but it's that what the now seem to mourn isn't the destruction of a bond, a metaphysical union they operated within, but just the loss of a particularly useful set-up. Sure, understanding social and biological functions are important, and it would be idiotic to think love is entirely a mystery in every aspect (and literally no one claims this). But the image of love Jenkins builds is too muscular in its drive towards control, and leaves far too little space for valuing something that actually can't be chosen and understood. Maybe I am romanticizing love, but look at the alternative.

It's important to clarify that of course you don't ever own your partner in the way you do a consumer good, but what I'm alluding to is a particular stance towards your partner which is analogous to how we choose a consumer good simply for personal gratification and discard it once it has served its use. I call this "consumerist" because it relies on respect for choice without any notion of a certain state of affairs being considered valuable in itself and not just because it is desired in the moment, and I think this is a recipe for our desires being left entirely up to what cultural advertising will tell us (to an extent even greater than presently). People picking out of a line of goods they're seen on tv also think they are free choosers exercising autonomy, we don't think they're any less of consumers because of this. (Of course someone who sees the effect of culture on patterns of love as non-existent will disagree on this point)


Addendum: The spectre of redistribution

All while this is going on, Jenkins does want to insist that calls for the redistribution of love cannot be sustained at all.

But, on pain of sounding like a broken record, they aren’t. Love, sex, and people are not property or resources that we get to manage and distribute in the name of “equity.” Men are not entitled to demand a “fair share” of love, sex, or women.

But those two ideas simply don't follow. Just because love or the lover isn't property doesn't mean they shouldn't be "distributed". She certainly points that there are many difficult questions for someone advocating for the distribution of love:

Most important, though, is the suggestion that we view the ethics of love and sex through the lens of equitable distribution, or justice. We need to remember that we are talking about people and their most intimate relationships with other people. Is the idea that the unattractive women will voluntarily choose to take drugs in order to become available to the unsuccessful men (and vice versa)? Or will they be forced to take such drugs? The first option sounds bizarre, but the second is disturbing. Anyhow, who decides who counts as unattractive or unsuccessful in the first place? In such subjective assessments, whose standards are we to take as definitive?

But under her vision, where all of the romantic mystique is gone, what reason isn't there for distribution? I suspect Jenkins will suggest that autonomy and choice are important. This isn't a bad reason, but if love is stripped of mystique and is just a social and biological reality in the particular senses she specifies, why not redistribution? At the minimum this involves moral principles external to her idea of love,which she hasn't defended here. A romantic mystique meanwhile would have shot down the idea simply because part of love's mystery is that is can't be yoked to such a base calculus, so I'm counting it as a win for it in this regard.

Ultimately, Jenkins might dig in her heels regarding these objections, but unconvinced me will simply remain in my corner and keep praising the Mysteries of Love.

[Rees · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great survey of the current philosophical and scientific work on what love is socially and biologically. She presents good arguments on why we should change our conception of romantic love and what that might look like. I think she sometimes does not engage with opposing claims too much, but I think that’s alright and just leaves the opening for other work in response to hers.

[Olivia Sun · Rating 5 out of 5]

absolutely phenomenal! so much insight into love as both biology and a social construction. challenges a lot of accepted norms about love, including ones i’ve held. i agree with people who say it sounded TED talkey at times, but i think the provoking content outweighs that

[Ronja · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you already have, at least on a theoretical level, questioned the cultural norm of monogamy and are familiar with the basic idea of social constructionism, “What love is” won’t probably be a world-view-changing experience for you. Still, I would recommend this book for everyone interested in themes such as social norms, feminism and relationships. Especially if you’d prefer to read something brief and easy to understand. Overall, the book was quite sociological. Or maybe, as a sociology student, I just read it so? Anyway, I was happily surprised that it didn’t settle only for pondering the concept of love and its dual nature but also discussed the social effects of a heterosexual-monogamous and mystic way of presenting romantic love.

[Kaila · Rating 2 out of 5]

Doesn't take any risks, and is milquetoast because of it. You'd probably only read this if you were liberal, but most of the information presented here is stuff liberals already agree with. Not heavy enough to be philosophy, not preachy enough to be self-help, not about relationships much at all. What we're left with is...not much. I had to force myself to finish it.

[Marisa]

Overall, I wish this book had been much longer and more in depth - I think Jenkins' ideas are good, but a lot of the sections are short and descriptive, without much to say about her "dual-nature" argument. I often felt like Jenkins would approach an interesting question, then get sidetracked. But probably the book is just geared to a different audience, maybe someone a bit younger (the freshman in an introduction to philosophy course maybe, lol).

Jenkins' "dual-nature" theory of love is interesting, though I would have appreciated her giving us more examples of how a dual-nature theory could be applied to other things, or even other types of love. I also am not convinced that this theory is the best way to study romantic love - mainly, I didn't agree with the way Jenkins argued that everything can be categorized as either biology or social influence, after having argued against the use of binaries for most of the book. This ledger method (or the actor analogy) creates two separate buckets that aspects of love can be dumped into - society and biology can never both be responsible for an aspect together, in a kind of mutual constitutive way. Personally, I prefer to see biology and society as two ways of measuring and viewing and understanding love - love is both, like light is both a particle and a wave, depending on how you look at it.

Overall I read this because I was unsatisfied with the gender analysis in Designer Relationships and it's much more thoughtful than that book, and I think Jenkins is a good writer and has probably done important work here, especially in the world of philosophy. Maybe now I'll finally finish The Second Sex.

[kristin conrad kilgallen · Rating 5 out of 5]

impressively accessible philosophy, Carrie is a wonderful writer and I sped through this book in one weekend. the subject matter is fascinating, as well as being timely and practically important. written from a feminist point of view and imo inclusive of trans, non-binary, and queer folk. AND I think it gets a bit existentialist at the end ;) 10/10 recommend 5/5 stars

I have a lot of favourite quotes, but here's just one from the conclusion...

"On a personal level, understanding love's dual nature can contextualize our own experiences with love. We come to see our individual stories as embedded within social structures that we didn't choose, any more than we chose the biology that drives us...
The script is an off-the-peg deal: sex, passion, affection, care, commitment, settling down, marriage, earning less or more than your spouse, doing more or less of the housework, having kids, getting bored with sex, monogamy forever, the death. And it comes with a side order of amatonormativity, designed to make it an offer you can't refuse: it's this or a life of loneliness (according to US Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy)."

[Mary Jean · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one I will read a couple more times to continue to absorb the ideas and arguments presented by the author.

[Veronica · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great guide to thinking about the philosophy of love -- the science and socialization both taken seriously -- and how it has and is changing.

[سیاووش · Rating 2 out of 5]

خیلی هیجان داشتم برای این کتاب و هی بهش فرصت دادم که یه چیزی بگه و تا آخرش هیچی نگفت.

[James Jones · Rating 3 out of 5]

The ideas that were presented were good. A lot of history of ideas and how things have changed over time which is helpful knowledge to me. I think with this approach though she took on too many subjects which spread herself thin on explanations/ rebuttals of the subjects. I think if she went in depth with less subjects she could’ve been more affective. I understand she wanted to keep the book short but the explanations/ defenses of her ideals fell flat in many ways

[Ian V · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best books I've ever read. Absolutely brilliant. It voiced thoughts I've had for years, with an intelligent and lucid voice. A fascinating deep dive into love and its mystiques and options.

[Em · Rating 3 out of 5]

Carrie Jenkins’ “What Love Is” presents a particular difficulty in reviewing: it is at the same time a work of original philosophy and an introduction to love for the general populace. After skimming various reviews on Amazon.com and Goodreads, many people seem to have fallen into the trap of taking it as just one of these things.

People with (at least) some background in academic philosophy take it as being too simple, with very little argumentation toward a fairly obvious thesis and failing to interact with enough of the surrounding literature on the topic. Such criticisms make sense if they were of Jenkins’ other book, “Grounding Concepts: An Empirical Basis for Arithmetic Knowledge”, but less so for something that is trying to do for philosophy what Carl Sagan has done for science writing.

On the other hand, many reviewers find Jenkins to be too dry, asking weird abstract questions, using large or esoteric words, and having a condescending tone—much of what you’d expect someone to say with their first interaction with philosophy (especially if they didn’t know what they’re getting into). But taking it as solely one or the other is a mistake: it is best understood as a mixture of the two.

Jenkins’ view on love is quite similar: it is both biological and socially constructed at once. The strongest chapters of this book include these two on the biology of love and the social construction of love. Viewing this book as a kind of introduction to philosophy (what sorts of questions philosophers are interested in asking and how they go about answering them), it is quire successful in its early chapters. However, other chapters like “philosophers on love” and “under construction” are conceptually disorganized and hard to follow. Despite them having masterfully sequential prose, I found myself wondering what the overarching point of the chapter was, or if this is merely where some leftover—but important—ideas found themselves strung along.

As for her philosophical contribution, I agree that it is a bit simplistic, with little argumentation, but those don’t seem to me problematic. However, throughout her discussion of love, it is very hard to tell when she is talking descriptively (what love is) and normatively (what love should be). She often gives normative style refutations of what appear to be descriptive answers to the question of what love is (i.e. that so-and-so’s view is sexist). This argumentative move alone is not a bad thing specifically because we take love to be a good thing! But it seems that she should be more clear in stating that some normative concerns will play into our descriptive project, perhaps it—like the biological and social aspects of love—is not a dichotomy but a blend.

Thus, when she sadly concludes that she may not be in love because romantic love is currently constructed to be monogamous, she could easily say that her own life bears out that this can’t be the answer! Perhaps what love could (or should) be is part of what love is. This ultimately seems like her conclusion, but she takes a quite roundabout way to get there.

“What Love Is” ultimately exceeds in many ways as an introduction to philosophy by making clear what the questions are, and how we go about answering them. But some digressions (like the wholly true one about how problematic the culture of academic philosophy is) seem to serve as more commentary for those already in the (academic) community than getting the general population into a particular method of asking and thinking. Her philosophical contribution is in weaker form, but, at the end of the day, Jenkins has mostly accomplished her goal of giving the reader a jumping off point to think about love for oneself, even if she took you on a few odd detours along the way.

[Margareta · Rating 4 out of 5]

Carrie Jenkins' What Love Is is a light and intriguing read. As some other reviewers have pointed out, I was surprised by how accessible it was. This has the benefit of opening the ideas explored up to a wider audience, but personally I was a bit frustrated that it didn't challenge enough, especially given her background as a philosopher. There are plenty of pop-philosophy texts on the subject and I'm not convinced that any of the arguments explored in this book are truly revolutionary. Nevertheless, I enjoyed what it had to offer, especially in legitimating non-normative approaches to love, romance, and relationships.

[Mary Clare · Rating 3 out of 5]

Full review!

Format: Hard Copy

In this book, Carrie Jenkins explores some philosophical questions that are usually ignored when it comes to the day-to-day experience of romantic love. She questions and challenges long-standing assumptions, looks into the arguments that love is only social or that love is only biology, and explores the evolution of romantic love.

Her writing is very accessible and includes references to her own life, to pop culture, to history, and to science. She manages to lay out her thoughts in a way that is really the antithesis to the intentionally dense writing style that you find so often in academia. She wants anyone to be able to pick up this book and understand what she is trying to say and I think that she succeeds at that.

I think that people who have never explored the questions that she asks herself will gain a lot from reading this book. However, I found that given my background, I did not end up getting a lot of new information from this book. It was very reassuring to see my own thoughts written in a book, but what I was really hoping for was a dive into the nitty-gritty of the questions that she tackles. It ended up being more of an intro into questioning assumptions about love. I think if I had picked this up two years ago, it would have been an absolute revelation. But as it is, I just wanted her to tell me something I didn't already know and she didn't really give me that.

This book was good, but I didn't leave it with any more information than I had when I approached it.

I would recommend this book for anyone who is just beginning to explore questions about the nature of love (both in a philosophical, abstract and a practical sense, meaning how the nature of love is interacting with you in your life). And I would recommend it for anyone who wants to be reassured that the boundaries they see on love are indeed socially-constructed. But, if you have a history of thinking about these questions, then be aware that you may not get much from this book. Honestly, I learned more about the nature of love and the practicalities/thought processes involved with breaking down the social borders of love from podcasts than from this book. Let me know if you want those podcast recommendations, though!

Over all, I gave this book 3/5 stars which means "fair" to me. It was a fun read but I was hoping to get more out of it. I wish she had gone more in depth with her arguments but I also understand that if she had done so, she would have lost some of the book's read-ability. Not my favorite, not a book I would recommend to everyone, but a pleasant book on a subject that I think about a lot!

Note: all of my reviews contain spoilers

[Ashlie Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This work has several key strengths including its critical look at both the classic and contemporary constructions/conceptualizations of and evidence for romantic love and an inclusive focus that is clearly informed by a gender awareness that I am grateful to see. However, as someone trained in psychology, social psychology in particular, it is difficult not to view these musings as myopic.

While the author poses well-articulated arguments against reductionism and black and white thinking (i.e biology OR social/cultural roots of love) she easily falls prey to this false dichotomizing for much of the book. She acknowledges the individualized nature of love on numerous occasions but fails to grasp the scope of the psychological underpinning of romantic/sexual love. Although she expounds on the excitement she feels regarding the utility and promise of science in the area of love, she lacks both theoretical and empirical coverage of critical psychological phenomenon that show clear relevance to her claims, including but not limited to interpretations/attributional understandings of biological arousal (e.g. the misattribution of arousal as romantic/sexual love), the role of mental sets, the roles of proximity and similarity in determining the likelihood of love, individual differences in the extent to which social norms are realized, and the individual construction of reality as truth.

Current social sciences that explore the human experience consistently call for use of the biopsychosocial model, often regarding any individualized focus in one or two areas as insufficient to draw significant claims from.

Thus, concluding thoughts: this work warrants both 1) respect for the compelling and accessible coverage of multiple fields in the biological and social factors relevant to the human experience of love and 2) a skeptical acknowledgment that it does not offer a satisfactory viewpoint from which we can establish empirical or experiential truth.

[Andrew Heritage · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wasn't sure what to expect when I read this, but what I read was not something I would have expected had you asked me to guess. I had anticipated on some sort of philosophical treatise on the definition of love, biologically and societally, and while that was covered, I was surprised, albeit pleasantly, by the amount of progressive propositions. Homosexuality, feminism, civil liberties, and non-normative romantic lives were exposed and under the gun.

The end result? That there is still a lot of work to do in the world of love is truly to be egalitarian, considering the vast array of what is out there. Polyamory seemed to be a special focus, given the author's life, in not terribly surprised. At moments it seemed like a revaluation of values, at other points it seemed like an open letter to society begging for understanding of various lifestyles.

All in all, I didn't walk away with any new information, but the new packaging of information I had did put it in an interesting frame.

[Danielle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, it's close to Valentine's Day so, of course, it's release time for all the love books! This is one of the best ones I've read. I really enjoyed the exploration of love's biological and social aspects through the lens of philosophy and history. Much more 'brainy' than I expected. It amused me that it seems that the impetus for the writing of the book was the author's polyamorous relationship status and how it made her feel to not fit society's mold of what defines romantic love. Her response is to use her education and mind to disprove and improve upon the current thinking about love. She makes thoroughly impressive arguments and backs them all up with evidence and solid reasoning as to why our definition of romantic love is, and always has been, so very lacking.

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This would have been a great read during my first year of GLS when we were focused on reason and passion. I think I was quite struck by just how much I hadn't thought about love conceptually. The societal message that love is a mystery and something better not to overthink is so pervasive. And it cloaks the controls (particularly gendered controls) embedded in the social construction of love. Jenkins’ central thesis, that love is both biological and socially constructed is compelling and well reasoned. There is hope that the social construction of romantic love can either continue to evolve to become more inclusive of the human experience, or cease to be such a benchmark of human development. While those options seem in opposition, either would likely be progress.

[Howl Cockburn · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was tl;dr. Sort of like a blog post that spiralled out of control. Philosophy of love isn't useful when biology/social science can explain love with depth and specificity. For example, love is closely liked with attachment theory(1).

I'm not sure who the target audience is for this book but it's not the average consumer. This feels like it's written for academics but I don't think academics would enjoy it. The book is a philosopher talking about biology, "social constructs/social sciences", and mostly her own experience and her infatuations with Mr. Russel.

Overall the book is correct and offers some nice insights and perspectives but it's very much common sense/obvious shit. I think them majority of the early chapters could have been just stories/examples of different relationships in different societies/time periods. So people reading it can relate and be like, wow. That's exactly what my relationship was like. Or, damn. that really was how things were for my parents or for people 100 years ago.

As for "non-monogamous relationships and queer activism". The opposition to non-monogamous can be summed up in two sentences. Monogamy sells. Traditional people like their traditions. That's all there is too it. But she's right in that monogamy is treated as an ideal for EVERYONE when it only might be good for some people.

I think this is the main worthwhile though in the book: "I think we are capable of striking the necessary balance: changing what needs to change without destroying romantic love entirely. Here's how. Romantic love, at the social level, could have the function of taking as input attraction and affection between adults (not necessarily a particular number or of particular genders) and outputting intimate bonds and relationships the are special and significant in people's lives. Optional Add-ons can then include sex, kids, home building, family building, agreeing not to enter into other relationships, caring for a dog together, writing love poems ... whatever floats the boat of the people in the boat. These optional extras would work like a buffet: people would be free to decide what features they wanted in their own relationships without facing stigma for what they did or didn't choose."

I would have liked to see the book just start with this and then provide examples from different perspectives. Evolution/biology. Social Psychology. History. Examples of how relationships/dating is different now than 10 years ago.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attachm...

[Kim · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can’t imagine a philosophical text being so accessible yet retaining engaging critical thought, presenting it mindfully, carefully, and with an overtly stated aim for social change. Yet this is it.
Love.
I’ve studied sex, gender, bodies, intersexuality, gender fluidity, sexual desire... all in philosophy (albeit 16 years ago.)
Are there gaps in this book? Of course! The author, an academic, speaks to the unavoidablility of them in a work made for the general public... this is not a doctoral thesis or a comprehensive scholarly tome. The reviews criticizing it for failing to be such are missing the point; Jenkins is reaching out to non-academics. Her arguments are nonetheless as sound and no less fraught than any academically-intended audience tracts I’ve encountered. In fact, she performs better intellectual work than many publishing in peer-reviewed academic journals.
No, I don’t have a PhD in Philosophy so those who bow to the ivory tower as the only place where critical thinking can occur can dismiss me (if they accept Wikipedia references from their students though, I withdraw any belief in their own ability to think or teach critically 🤪🤔.)
This is a work that could be game-changing if taken up in public discourse. I primarily read library books; What Love Is: And What It Could Be will be ordered from my local independent bookshop. I intend to read it again. I hope to purchase a few copies for friends I know would be very interested.

I loved this book. It’s brilliant. It’s validating. It’s purposefully imperfect (I can’t stand academics who think they’ve though out every iteration and are therefore immune to question.) Jenkins doesn’t know it all and doesn’t pretend to. (Yeah, grammar crap there from me!) She asks questions that are relevant to anyone who seeks romantic love, believes themself to be in romantic love, has thought about love beyond Hallmark card sentimentality. Excellent.

[Lady V. · Rating 3 out of 5]

While I liked the general direction the book took and nodded along to a lot of the conclusions Jenkins reaches, I still found the work lacking in several notable ways. The explanation can be as simple as that she wanted to make the book accessible (and not too bold) to a large, primarily monogamous, heterosexual, and allonormative audience, but that does not change the fact that a lot of the book is rather meek.

There isn't really a discussion on who the groups practicing polyamory are (and even more importantly, any conclusions you could draw from that that would definitely strengthen her main thesis of amatonormativity as part of the nuclear family propagator), check and discuss any patterns there, the uncritical use of the term "ethical non-monogamy", baffled me. I am always disappointed when I see it propagated by polyam people, but a person writing seriously on the topic, especially in defense* of polyamory should expunge it from their vocabulary, or even better, largely discuss the implicit questioning of the ethics of polyamorous people.

In fact, the very act of pretending that gay love and relations are solved just because some governments have made marriage legal is wrong, in the nicest terms. And this comment really sets the tone for the work for me - criticism of a lot of "big philosophers", but inevitably still leaning on them. A misunderstanding of what social constructs really are - there is a claim that they cannot themselves produce profound biological changes in us, when they most definitely can. That is trivial to prove.

I want to end my review with a quote from the book that I think sums up my problems with it: "Many well-adjusted, happy, productive, and socially valuable people are single and haven’t been in love;"

[T.C. Mill · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wouldn't have minded a longer version of this book that went deeper into its evidence and arguments - that's more a compliment than a criticism, a "I want to read more" rather than "There isn't enough here," though for the first few chapters I was unsure. In the interests of clarity and pacing (I assume), Jenkins at times makes a point or dismisses an alternative theory in a paragraph that someone else might handle in an entire chapter. This is philosophy, not investigative journalism.

Above all the point she has to make is that love is neither a biological phenomenon or a social construction, but both of them at the same time. In the metaphor she uses, biology (hormones, etc) is the actor, and the role it plays is romantic love (which also carries a lot of cultural baggage). It can't be denied that romantic love is, at minimum, wider than the culturally common conception of it - Jenkins points to the wider acceptance of queer love as romantic for one example; another is her own polyamory - but at the same time, there's certainly something going on in our bodies and romantic love isn't infinitely flexible (as Kinsey 0s and 6s can attest). So Jenkins offers a tool to conceptualize how they interact. It strikes me as a useful tool for understanding other experiences that are a combination of biology and cultural expression, such as gender - I would love to see anything other thinkers have developed along those lines.