More generally, recent studies on the politics of recognition often
assume that the sentence‘I recognize you’resembles sentences like‘I
baptize you’or‘I appoint you’.^79 In these sentences, the object of the
act undergoes a performative change. The old religious usage, how-
ever, typically understands‘I recognize you’as parallel to‘I promise
you’or‘I serve you’. The subject of these sentences (rather than the
object) undergoes a change. ‘Recognizing’ in this classical sense
resembles either the strictly performative‘promising’or the indirectly
performative‘serving’.^80 The distinctive way of religious recognition
consists in putting the emphasis on the recognizing subject, the
recognizer. This being said, both religious recognition and the mod-
ern studies on mutual recognition normally assume that both parties
undergo some form of transformation.
4.5.3. Recognizer vs RecognizeeAmong recent philosophical scholars of recognition, Heikki Ikäheimo
discusses the differentiation between the recognizer and the recognizee
in detail. His elaboration is valuable in the light of ourfindings.
Ikäheimo distinguishes between‘causally constitutive’(cau) and‘onto-
logically constitutive’(ont) acts of recognition. In (cau), recognition
plays a causal role in generating something; in (ont), recognition
becomes part of the very being of this something. Roughly speaking,
(cau) thus corresponds to our use of the term‘performative’,whereas
(ont) resembles our conception of‘identity constitution’.^81
Ikäheimo considers that both (cau) and (ont) may pertain either
to the subject (s) or to the object (o) of recognition, or to both. In
(cau-s), the subject is generated in the act of recognition; in (ont-o),
recognition becomes part of the very being of the recognizee. In
addition, what is established in recognition can be either the
(^79) Cf. Thompson 2006, 14–18, 186–7.
(^80) While‘promising’is already an act as verbal utterance,‘serving’needs actual acts
of service in addition to the statement to serve somebody. The present study makes no
consistent distinction between these senses, assuming that‘I recognize you’can mean
both. Sometimes a mere declaration is enough, sometimes concrete acts need to
accompany it. The important point here is that both senses highlight the recognizer’s
change.
(^81) Ikäheimo 2014, 18–24. The abbreviations are my own and do not cover all
varieties studied by Ikäheimo. For instance, he also discusses‘causally responsive’and
‘ontologically responsive’acts of recognition.
244 Recognition and Religion