(B)’. Through this gift of a more beautiful visual image, B can connect
with his own inner and real self better.
While making this connection is the act of‘self-recognition’,we
could also say that self-recognition also encompasses the process in
which the visual image is compared to the inner self of B. The peculiar
profile of Ficino’s self-recognition consists in claiming that I can
establish a deeper connection with myself through looking at other,
more beautiful soulmates. In this manner, Ficino’s self-recognition
resembles the reflexive identification of the thing and the recipient
discussed in section 4.3.
Calvin’s use of‘self-recognition’is structurally similar to that of
Ficino. When Christians‘recognize themselves before God’, they have
received a gift of identity, a gift of themselves, from the divine
counterpart. Before receiving such a gift of renewal, they can only
recognize themselves as sinful, analogically to Ficino’s less beautiful
lover who cannot connect with the better reality without the gift from
the beloved. The‘instrument’that enables self-recognition is not
memory, but the social bond of attaching oneself to the gift. This
being said, it may be possible that the Augustinian memory plays
some role in storing the inner image. The difference from thefirst
model is nevertheless clear: instead of introspection, self-recognition
requires that the person can receive himself as a gift from another.
While we have identified the feudal bond and bridal mysticism as
the intellectual roots of the model of relational self-discovery, there
may also be some more theoretical assumptions in this tradition.
(i) At the purely linguistic level, the identification between the gift and
the recipient enables the speaker to capture this view in terms of
gift transfer. (ii) In social reality, Griffin’s distinction between the
institution of patronage and the constitutive event of giving and receiv-
ing benefits may also be illuminating.^71 In relational self-discovery,
the benefit received establishes the new role and status of the
recipient. This is not far from saying that we receive ourselves in this
constitutive event.
(iii) In terms of theology, the new creation or rebirth establishes the
event of self-recognition for Luther and Calvin. When faith receives
the gift of new life, it reconstitutes the individual. In some sense, he
only becomes himself, a‘new man’, through the event of relational
(^71) Griffin 2013, 31–42. Cf. 4.2.
240 Recognition and Religion