How does Hegel’s concept of recognition relate to the long history
of religious recognition? To this question, I only give some responses
from a‘bird’s-eye view’, without claiming immediate literary depend-
ence or other precise positioning. From the perspective of religious
recognition, Hegel is clearly original and very different from Hobbes,
Locke, and Spalding. Fichte provides a starting point; it is also
noteworthy thatAnerkennungbecomes evident in so many different
approaches between 1794 and 1807. While the recognition of the lord
by the servant has been one of the important paradigms of religious
recognition since at least Bernard of Clairvaux, Hegel is critical of
the idea of domination and wants to achieve a basic equality of right.
His‘lord’and‘servant’do not relate to historical models but are
paradigms of consciousness. They may even be understood anti-
theologically in that when the servants no longer recognize the lord,
the lord ceases to exist;^146 or, when others are recognized in the same
manner as we recognize ourselves, the old hierarchies no longer exist.
Given these obvious differences, we nevertheless see three similar-
ities between Hegel and the tradition of religious recognition.
(i) The basic idea of a heteronomous constitution of the self is
available in the religious tradition in ways described in the preceding
chapters. Somewhat paradoxically, this dimension begins to fade in
religious modernity (König, Spalding), but it is abundantly present in
Luther, Calvin, and Zinzendorf. While not all versions of religious
heteronomy stress mutuality between people and God, many of them
clearly do, as we have observed. An unequal mutuality can be detected
in Luther and Calvin, which develops towards a sort of friendship
through struggle in Zinzendorf. The tradition ofappropriatiohas
brought the subjective emergence of religious mutuality into stronger
focus at least since Luther. Hegel adds the requirement of equality to
this already existing mutuality.
(ii) Another related but slightly different issue concerns the event
of recognizing oneself. The reflexive form is conspicuous in Augustine,
Ficino, and Calvin. In Augustine, self-recognition is concerned with
recollection from memory. In Ficino and Calvin, however, the event of
recognizing oneself means a relational self-discovery that goes deeper
(^146) On Hegel and the death of God, see e.g. Schmidt 1997, 11–18. In the section on
religion inJenaer Realphilosophie(p. 266;GW8, 280) Hegel states that God is the
depth of the consciousness or spirit that has reached the state of certainty and self-
awareness.
142 Recognition and Religion