necessarily like me.’^141 ‘Likeness of complexion, nourishment, edu-
cation, habit, or opinion is the cause of like affection...where several
of these causes occur together, there the interchange of love is found
to be strong.’^142
The context of love underlines the reciprocity and even equality of
a recognition that is supposed to be mutual. While the tradition from
Augustine to Bonaventure regards‘recognition’as the act of the
inferior partner, Ficino’s concept of recognition is oriented to a
mutuality and equality in love‘under the same star’. In a sense, Ficino
initiates a new tradition of recognition among (almost) equals. While
some seeds of this tradition may already be present in Aquinas,
Ficino’s Platonic–Augustinian idea of mutual recognitive recollection
in love marks a clear break from medieval feudalism.
Another historically significant and innovative feature of this idea
is that it is basically a self-recognition in which the visual image of
one’s beloved enables the lover to connect with his own interior
image. In many ways, this resembles the modern discussions regard-
ing the constitution of one’s own identity. While the act of‘recogniz-
ing itself’is for Augustine an act in which the mind is known to
itself,^143 Ficino considers that this act occurs in a radically heteron-
omous manner through loving another person.
Ficino takes the heteronomy of one’s self-recognition to a new
qualitative level. The visual perception of a beautiful body leads the
lover to a twofold adjustment:first, he can employ the visual image of
the other to connect with his own inner self. Second, he can employ
the inner self to make the beloved even more beautiful than his body
is. While the Platonic viewfinally proceeds from a stable inner astral
identity, this identity is constituted through the acts of perceptive
cognition and inward-looking recognition.
WhileDe amoreII and VI contain the most significant occurrences
ofrecognoscoin Ficino, he also uses the verb elsewhere to depict a
similar pattern. In hisPhilebus CommentaryFicino performs a gen-
eralization of the principle of heteronomy:
With all the powers that can be reflected onto their own acts, the
power’s act has to be directedfirst towards another object. Afterwards(^141) De amoreII, 8, Laurens, 47; Jayne, 57.
(^142) De amoreII, 8, Laurens, 49; Jayne, 57.
(^143) Augustine,Trin.14, 8 (section 2.2 above).
84 Recognition and Religion