As a whole, these taxonomies remain rudimentary. Issues of reli-
gious recognition might be grasped in a more refined way with
Ikäheimo’s taxonomy, which pays attention to vertical variants of
recognition. Such variants are not only relevant for the relationship
between God and humans but also for the hierarchical relationships
of premodern societies. I will therefore pay special attention to the
upward and downward variants of recognition. While I consider
Ikäheimo’s taxonomy of horizontal recognition helpful, I do not
interpret virtues like love and gratitude as variants of horizontal
recognition. Historical texts often manifest them as upward and
downward instances of recognition.
My own continuum of less and more demanding conceptions of
recognition employs many features of the views discussed above
without being identical with any of them. I take the normative
acknowledgement of facts as the most rudimentary form of recogni-
tion. Arto Laitinen’s phrase‘adequate regard’captures the essence of
this conception well.Adequate regardmeans a unilateral recognition
of other persons or any possessors of normative features; for instance,
religious truths. As some theorists claim that acts of recognition need
to be interpersonal and mutual, adequate regard may be deficient in
some sense. As a historical category, this conception is nevertheless
heuristically useful, as religious acts of recognition are sometimes
unilateral and may have impersonal objects. Adequate regard may
have upward or downward features. Some theorists refer to it in terms
of acknowledgement.^90
Interpersonal mutual recognition can be of different kinds,
depending on whether its upward or downward moves are being
discussed. I interpret these acts of recognition predominantly as
social interaction which need not involve a gift transfer. However,
since the events of giving and receiving favours, benefits, and gifts are
very common in religious texts, we come back to these features of gift
exchange in the systematic chapter (4.2, 4.3). Obviously, mutual
recognition between a higher and a lower person contains both
upward and downward features because of mutuality. In historical
texts, however, one can usually assume the default perspective from
which the primary recognition proceeds. This perspective may be
either upward, downward, or equal.
(^90) Laitinen 2011, 328–9, cf. section 1.2 above.
Introduction 31