client in terms of Roman social reality. A client provides various services
that the patron needs to sustain his position. God does not need such
services or clients. The feudal vassal discussed in section 2.3 may resem-
ble the religious person more closely, as the vassal remains a free agent in
the service of the lord. The terminology of childhood and adoption may
also be proper to describe the outcome of upward religious recognition.
In terms of social reality, therefore, the phenomenon of religious
recognition resembles the duty of returning a favour or benefit. While
this duty has affinities with patronage and friendship, it also remains
distinct from both of them. This social reality resembles the anthropo-
logical event of gift exchange; however, the reciprocity involved in
religious recognition does not need material or ceremonial gifts in
order to emerge. Indeed, the event of recognition manifests afirst-
time initiation rather than being‘ceremonial’. The duty involved in this
event is not a duty of payment but a constitutive duty to respond to the
favourable opportunity to bond oneself with a more powerful reality.
The comparison with Griffin’s views adds weight to my claim that
some of the most complex and demanding features of religious
recognition are already present in Greco-Roman antiquity. Issues of
reciprocity are significant in the ancient discussions regarding the
acknowledgement of higher truth. Even more importantly, these
discussions assume a heteronomous constitution of the participants.
The recognizer is constituted as believer or child of God in the event
of acknowledgement; analogically, the recognizee becomes the proper
object of religious truth in this act.
The act of religious recognition thus resembles the constitutive and
performative event of giving and receiving‘benefits’in Seneca’s dis-
cussion. The social relationship between the subject and object is not
presupposed before the event, but is created and established through
it. The demanding features of what we called‘identity constitution’in
section 1.4 are thus already present in Latin antiquity and can be
supported by analogies from Roman social history. This remark obvi-
ously does not cover the broadfield of social history. It employs one
analogy to illuminate the nature of religious recognition.
4.2.2. Ricoeur’s ResultsPaul Ricoeur’sThe Course of Recognitionwas briefly discussed in
section 1.2. We can now attempt a more detailed evaluation of this
Recognition in Religion 203