Hi, it’s Vanessa, your ENLIGHTENMENT host, and I’m excited to do our second Philosophy Café , after our January “New Year” kickoff was such a fun success. Because Valentine’s Day is coming up, of course February’s topic has to be all about Love, and what does that exactly mean these days anyway?

There’s a twist to this one. Besides the professor who leads the philosophy department at UC Davis, I’ve also invited the psychologist who founded UC Davis’s Adult Attachment Lab, which studies close relationships, romantic love, sexual motivation, and all the behaviors and emotions involved in those.

We’ll start by asking them what philosophical musings and psychological data have revealed about love — is it a feeling? is it a choice? are we really “falling” in love? is it just our brain on drugs? Then we’ll talk amongst ourselves about what the meaning of love means to us, and how we approach it in our hearts, our heads and our everyday lives.

Whether you’re in a long-term relationship or currently looking for love, you’ll have good cheer, good conversations, and learn a little something from, and about, your fellow human beings.

OUR GUESTS

• Elaine Landry, chair of the philosophy department at UC Davis

• Phillip Shaver, professor emeritus of psychology at UC Davis and director of the Adult Attachment Lab

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Ruhstaller’s BSMT has a variety of beers on tap, as well as wine, kombucha and sparkling water. Please feel free to BYO food and nonalcoholic beverages.

Sign up to attend by registering at our Eventbrite link here

Photo: “The Lovers of the Bastille,” 1957, by Willy Ronis