rather than receiving. At the same time, the old paradigms of conver-
sion and self-preservation depict‘recognition’as a response to some
foundational act of divine giving or commendation. In terms of the
table, religious recognition would thus be a responsive counterpart
to initial divine giving rather than a standard form of gift transfer.
Given this, we should not make all religious recognition dependent
on the constraints of the table. We are only concerned with asking in
what precise sense the language of giving may be helpful as an
intermediate conception between gift exchange and social interaction.
Because this language has a sophisticated capacity for suggesting
different identifications, we can spell out the relevant content or
as-qualification with the help of such identifications. If we say, for
instance, that religious recognition allows the person to fulfil his
destiny, the content of recognition in this claim can be analysed as
an identification of the thing and the recipient. We can employ the
resources of ditransitive language in this manner without adopting
the full package of anthropological gift exchange.
The complementary pair 2–5 may also be useful in this regard. This
pair gives some insight into the much-discussed issue of whether
recognition always pertains to persons. In case 5, an impersonal
thing is given to itself. While this sounds somewhat awkward, the
phrase is better understood when it is compared to case 2, in which an
impersonal thing presents itself so that it can be received. In the
complementary event of receiving, for instance, a church recognizes
the baptism of a sister church as true baptism or an examiner considers
that a certificate received from another institution is valid in his own
institution as well. An impersonal thing can thus be‘given’to itself. The
impersonal presentative construction of‘give’may thus provide some
clue to the issue of acknowledging or recognizing impersonal things.
The reduced pair 3–6 may offer some new insights. In colloquial
language, respect and recognition can be displayed as a general and
unaddressed attitude: give respect! While no material thing and no
recipient is spelled out, the phrase can be derived from the more
nuanced presentative construction, meaning manifestation or emer-
gence.^48 In displaying a recognitive or respectful attitude, the subject
can be said to perform an identification of thing and recipient in
which the ditransitive construction disappears. However, the language
(^48) Cf. Newman 1996, 148–52, 162–3.
230 Recognition and Religion