of its knowledge. By means of attachment and status attribution,
consciousness can grasp reality in distinctive ways.
When Hegel’s religious roots are discussed in detail, it may never-
theless be more fruitful to concentrate on the authors of the second
paradigm. Ficino and Zinzendorf, for instance, elaborate the devel-
opment of human self-consciousness in ways that employ the idea of
heteronomous bonding. Their description of the roles of lord and
servant, or lover and beloved, is reciprocal and dialogical. Similarly,
the ideas of freedom and of being owned by others establish a
dialogical complementarity in the second paradigm. As the present
study only lays out some leading ideas, there may well be other
religious sources relevant for the understanding of Hegel that have
remained undiscussed here.
4.2.8. History of TolerationGiven the interests of such contemporary scholars as Charles Taylor
(section 1.2), the present study needs to say something about the
historical relationship between religious recognition and the idea of
toleration. While it can be argued that the history of toleration evolves
from mere permission towards respect and mutual esteem, no similar
evolution towards‘fuller’conceptions of religious recognition can be
found. Rather, the ancient discussions appearing in, for instance, the
LatinRecognitionsalready assume a complex and demanding view of
religious recognition.
Our study has falsified the assumption that the pre-Enlightenment
versions of recognition were primarily expressed as codes of honour.
While honour plays some role in religious sources, recognition is very
clearly a distinct topic that emerges in its own right. Even in the
religious application of the feudal scheme of lord and servant, honour
and shame are not the primary issues; allegiance, social bonding, and
love are much more fundamental.
A complex discrepancy between recognition and toleration
concerns the relative stability of the subject. Thefirst and second
paradigms of religious recognition assume a recognizer who under-
goes a radical transformation in the act of recognition. Only the third
paradigm assumes a more stable recognizer and focuses more
strongly on the status change in the recognizee. This history seems
to go against the developments that some scholars observe in the
history of toleration.
Recognition in Religion 215