recognition may not change psychologically or ontologically, but it
is nevertheless evaluated anew.
Religious recognition may to some extent be called a phenomenon
that ‘unfolds’ itself in the course of Western intellectual history.
Especially in Latin medieval and early modern texts, the images of
feudal bond and love between bride and bridegroom allow a sophis-
ticated differentiation of the roles of the recognizer and the recogni-
zee. Issues like self-preservation, socialization, and ownership as well
as self-recognition are elucidated in this paradigm. The modern
paradigm of religious recognition, on the other hand, emphasizes
the existential attachment of the recognizer, which leads to a status
change in the recognizee. In some sense, this existential attachment
again enfolds or simplifies the concept of recognition when compared
to the medieval and early modern paradigm. The modern era shifts
the weight from the recognizer to the recognizee.
4.5.2. Ways of RecognitionThe‘ways’of religious recognition outlined in this study are consid-
erably different from the course followed by Ricoeur. For Ricoeur, the
history of recognition proceeds from identification to recognizing
oneself and, finally, to mutual recognition. While Ricoeur pays
some attention to the change in the recognizer, his way nevertheless
starts with the identification of the recognizee and ends with the
mutuality in which both partners are transformed.^77 Our historical
material outlines a way that starts with the dramatic transformation
of the recognizer in conversion. In our description of the way,
modernity shifts the attention towards the recognizee.
While mutuality permeates both the ancient and modern discus-
sions of recognition, our study regards the medieval and early modern
period as an age during which differentiated mutuality plays a particu-
larly prominent role. For Ricoeur, Hegel makes mutual recognition
possible.^78 Forourstudy,Hegelisafigure between the premodern and
modern paradigms of recognition, his strong emphasis on mutuality
resembling premodern ideas of love and servanthood.
(^77) Ricoeur 2005, 6, 23, 150–1. (^78) Ricoeur 2005, 171–81.
Recognition in Religion 243