Those Who Have Dared to Hymn Love’s Praises: A Symposium on Black Philosophies of Love

Presented by Basic Program instructors and open to all, these lectures also complement the texts and ideas from our curriculum and always include a Q&A session.

This First Friday Lecture is supported by the Class Gift given by the 2023 graduates of the Basic Program of Liberal Education for Adults.

Lecture description: As the academic study of love continues to grow, whether in the largely European field of "love studies" or in the more disciplinary discourses of the American academy one sentiment seems to remain: love has largely been ignored in intellectual discourse due to its complexity and nuance. These academics' concerns echo Phaedrus in Plato's Symposium: “Isn’t it terrible…that the poets make humans and paeans for other gods, yet not a single one of them…has ever offered an encomium to Eros [the God of love]?” (Trans. R.E. Allen). Yet when we broaden the lens of intellectual inquiry beyond the Western academic, we find that this is untrue. Scholars of all sorts have investigated love with a diligent, praiseful eye – though their inquiries may have occurred outside the Western academy. This is especially true in fundamental works by African Americans – whether in the sermons of Martin Luther King, the lyrics of Negro spirituals, or the interviews with James Baldwin. This lecture draws inspiration from the reportedly first intellectual dialogue on the topic of love – Plato's Symposium – and places a number of fundamental Black philosophies of love in conversation with one another. By attending to their context, particular arguments, and universal themes, I will demonstrate the unique way in which Black thinkers have hymns in praise of love as early as Phyllis Wheatley, and as recently as bell hooks. In doing so, I will make a case that symposiums remain a particular method for the critical study of love while also calling for a broadening of the canon of philosophers of love. 

Lecturer bio:  Paul Cato is a Ph.D. Candidate in the University of Chicago’s interdisciplinary Committee on Social Thought and a Visiting Research Scholar at the University of Notre Dame. His research examines Black Americans’ contributions to the practice and theorization of love – particularly those of James Baldwin. His dissertation outlines the discourse on “active love” – a decades-long conversation on political love between Baldwin and 20th-century intellectuals. He has also investigated “black love” and the love philosophies of Audre Lorde, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Emanuel Levinas. In addition to his scholarship, Paul is active in the fights against racism and ableism.