than Augustine’s recollection. A person’s identity is reconstituted and
discovered in a new manner through relating to the other in love and
self-denial. Luther’s view that the Christian is constituted externally to
one’s own person (extra nos) is another variant of this idea. This early
modern view of self-recognition, as formulated by Ficino and inter-
preted by Calvin (e.g. iusta recognitio sui,recognitio sui coram deo),
may even contain some seeds of equality. While Hegel’s idea of self-
recognition is not Augustinian, it resembles Ficino’s view of relational
self-discovery. Obviously, Hegel’s complex self-reflective dialectics can-
not be reduced to this tradition, but it is noteworthy that the option of
self-recognition enables the emergence of equal rights.
(iii) The third bird’s-eye view similarity concerns the Pietist
vocabulary as exemplified by Zinzendorf. He uses the language of
rights, labour, property, marriage, and acquiring, connecting religious
issues with economic and social matters. Zinzendorf also employs the
term‘struggle’and the idea of the reversal of the roles of the lord.
While such ideas are a commonplace in biblically based Christian
traditions, the economic terminology (erwerben,Eigentum,Recht,
Arbeit) particularly brings Zinzendorf closer to Hegel. We cannot
enter into discussion on the relationship between Hegel and German
Pietism here. While the Enlightenment emphasizes personal autonomy,
many Pietists preserve the older traditions of religious heteronomy.
After Hegel, German theology had a variety of available options
regarding the understanding of recognition. The Enlightenment
option of Locke and Spalding emphasizes the autonomy of persons
and the nature of acknowledgement as a primary affirmation of
religious conviction. The Hegelian option proceeds from the more
social and intersubjective emergence of consciousness. The older
religious option of heteronomousagnoscois available in classical
and normative theological sources.
In what follows, a twofold thesis will be discussed with regard to
modern German Protestant theology. On the one hand,Anerkennung
plays a fairly important role in some of its most prominent theological
works. On the other hand, this role is not very consciously reflected:
while the event of recognition is claimed to be significant, it does not in
itself emerge as an object of theological reflection. For this reason,
Anerkennunghas a sort of shadow existence in modern theology.
Friedrich Schleiermacher is generally regarded as the most import-
ant Protestant theologian of the nineteenth century, and his dogmatics
The Modern Era 143