For Valentine’s Day, there was only one question “What Is X” could ask, one that thinkers through the ages, from Plato to Howard Jones, have not managed to answer: What is love? In this episode, Justin E. H. Smith is joined by New School media studies professor Dominic Pettman, the author of books such as Peak Libido and Creaturely Love, for a wide-ranging discussion of desire, romance and what it means to be completed by someone (or something) else. Starting with Plato’s Symposium, they move on to Agamben and Badiou, Leibniz and Lacan, Proust and Fourier, Spinoza and Berlant. (One lesson from this episode: philosophers might be our best aphorists of love.) With these thinkers, they’re prepared to tackle the big issues: the tension between love of hyper-singularity and love for the generic nature of humanity; whether love is work or grace; how Aristophanes predicted Sex and the City; whether you can marry the Berlin Wall, or a white-naped crane; and just how it is love is a concept we can use to describe both our romantic partners and the crucial cup of coffee we have each morning.

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