of self-knowledge is significant. He teaches that humans can only
achieve true self-knowledge (notitia sui) through looking at God.^61
Calvin employs the reflexive forms of recognition fairly often. An
adequate self-recognition (recognitio sui) of an individual without
God takes place in the confession of sins. As renewed beings, how-
ever, Christians can‘recognize themselves before God’.^62 Like Ficino,
Calvin teaches that this new self-recognition emerges heterono-
mously or relationally. Christians achieve this self-recognition either
through comparing themselves with sinful people or through seeing
themselves in the light of God. While Calvin’s religious aim clearly
differs from Ficino’s, they both teach the possibility of new self-
recognition that only emerges in a relational fashion. This new self-
recognition can no longer be expressed in terms of memory, but an
attachment to an inner reality that is only available through faith or love.
The intellectual history of self-recognition as relational self-
attachment can be argued to start with Ficino and Calvin. Remark-
ably, both authors assume an event of‘seeing the other’against which
this new self-recognition can emerge. This is not, however, otherness
in the late modern sense of the word. It is nevertheless significant that
the theme of relational social bonding through faith and love emerges
in the Renaissance and the Reformation in ways that already start to
resemble such later thinkers as Hegel and Levinas. As the reflection
on love is very common in this period, other authors like Leone
Ebreo^63 may also be relevant in tracing the various lines of influence
towards modernity.
Looking at eighteenth-century German conceptions, thefigure of
self-recognition does not seem to be prominent before Fichte and
Hegel. While Spalding (section 3.2) connects recognition with reci-
procity and the general relevance of religion for human life, he does
not make much use of reflexive forms. Like Luther, he thinks that
religious believers should recognize other people and principles and
that this recognition leads to the insight that religious truth is‘for me’.
This is not, however, a self-recognition in the sense proposed by
Ficino and Calvin.
Hegel (section 3.3) often employs the reflexive forms ofanerken-
nen. As we noted in section 4.3, the linguistic resources of German
(^61) Cf. section 2.7. Calvin,Inst.1,1,2. (^62) Inst. 3, 14, 18.
(^63) For Leone Ebreo’sDialoghi d’amoreand other similar texts, see e.g.
Ebbersmeyer 2012.
236 Recognition and Religion