Schleiermacher, the supreme ruler is the object rather than the
subject of religious recognition.
Another aspect of this new emphasis is that the recognizer is
described in terms of increasing stability. The personal consciousness
that recognizes religious truths by means of existential attachment
is not fundamentally reconstituted. Rather, this act of recognition
provides a new cognitive horizon that allows one to see the religious
object in new ways. In this manner, the third-paradigm shift towards
subjective consciousness nevertheless assumes a less radical trans-
formation of personal identity than the one occurring in the teachings
of thefirst and second paradigms.
The nineteenth-century analogies between various kinds of
recognition—political, diplomatic, personal, and religious—likewise
assume that the recognizer is seen in fairly stable and consistent
terms. The act of recognition allows seeing the recognizee in a new
light. What the legal act of recognition primarily brings about is not a
subjective transformation but a status change in the object. In this
manner, the third paradigm of religious recognition concurs with
modern ideas of legal recognition. The existential attachment can
thus be understood as a cognitive capability of the recognizer and a
status change for the recognizee.
4.2.7. Relationship to HegelThe overall relationship of Hegel to ourfinding has already been
discussed in section 3.3. While Hegel is clearly original, ideas like the
heteronomous constitution of the self, the event of recognizing one-
self, and the vocabulary of labour, property, and marriage connect
him with religious tradition. To this we can now add the intellectual
placeofHegelattheborderlinebetweenthesecondandthird
paradigms. The complex network of reciprocities and allegiances,
elaborated by authors of the second paradigm of religious recogni-
tion, is continued and secularized in Hegel’s philosophy.
At the same time, Hegel’s emphasis on subjective consciousness
links him with the third-paradigm theologians Spalding and Schleier-
macher. This link does not so much concern the substance of their
thought as their subject-oriented methodology. To see how recogni-
tion works, we must assume a structure of consciousness that can
achieve new cognitive insights and attribute new statuses to the object
214 Recognition and Religion