ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how love and morality have motivated theory and practice in gendering philosophy of religion. It argues that moral norms in philosophy of religion motivate the gendering, or shaping of the identities of men and women in love relations. Morality and its close relation to the 'moralizing' of love can become a problem inherent in the process of gendering. The chapter explores the gendering of love relations by Mary Wollstonecraft. In dismissing 'female emotions', contemporary feminists of sexual difference have been known to object to what they see as Wollstonecraft's deep suspicion of emotion. In The Metaphysics of Morals Immanuel Kant introduces a further, crucial distinction between pathological and moral feeling: an original emotion, or feeling, of love exists prior to its moral cultivation. The chapter proposes to raise awareness of the morality of divine love and how it has been gendered in the texts of modem and contemporary philosophy.
