Gender and the infinite: On the aspiration to be all there is

Abstract

Twentieth-century philosophers of religion made strides forward in advancing sophisticated arguments about religious knowledge, language, experience and arguments for the existence of the theistic God. However, by the end of the century Anglo-American philosophers in particular tended to treat philosophy of religion as synonymous with a Christian account of the divine. Male and female philosophers assumed an uncritical familiarity with, and so unquestioning acceptance of, the classical model of traditional theism as the subject matter for philosophers of religion. Nevertheless, before the turn of the century a number of feminist philosophers of religion had begun to challenge this account for its gender-bias; and non-western philosophers criticized the ethnocentrism or racism of western claims to neutrality in philosophy of religion. Feminist philosophers directed their criticism to the traditional theistic conception of God for its idealization of exclusively male attributes.