contexts, however, one can easily see who recognizes and who
(or what) is recognized. For the same reason, words like‘availability’
and‘recognitive’seldom appear in historical description. In historical
texts, availability typically concerns the sociocultural setting in which
the actors relate to one another; for instance, as lord and servant or
as lover and beloved. In Chapter 4, however,‘the recognizer’and
‘the recognizee’are again prominently employed as systematizing
descriptions of the historical material.
A Ricoeurian mayfind components 1–3 too reductionist and
claim that (a) the recognizee inevitably performs a reciprocal act of
attachment and (b) that in this reciprocity something like a gift is
exchanged. However, I want to draft only the minimal components of
recognition and maintain that unilateral recognitions are also worth
being taken seriously. While most historical acts of religious recog-
nition contain some mutuality, one can normally see clearly the
difference between the recognizer and the recognizee. The claim of
recognition as‘gift exchange’will occupy us through the entire study;
concluding remarks about it appear in Chapter 4, especially 4.3.
The concept of recognition employed in the historical part of this
study thus refers to a specific kind of knowledge through which
people intentionally attach themselves to other people, facts, or things
so that they are available to one another as the recognizer and the
recognizee. This description remains underdetermined and in many
ways insufficient. As the analytical philosophers stress that recogni-
tion is a cluster concept with several dimensions, I intend to be
minimalist in defining the necessary components. Other components
may be relevant in some cases but not in all. The three components
named above are only employed to open up the broader historical-
semantic perspective to whichagnosco/recognoscoand its equivalents
belong. They give a working definition rather than a full-fledged
account of the phenomenon of recognition.
The studies discussed above in 1.2 and 1.3 give us material to define
various heuristicconceptions of recognition. Like Forst and Rawls,
I assume that a conception complements the concept through giving
it a comprehensive interpretation. In his history of toleration, Forst
employs four different conceptions of it. They are helpful for the
present study both as historical reminders and as systematic illustra-
tions of how the tool of conception works. Hisfirst conception is that
of‘permission’: when we tolerate something we permit it to happen.
The second is that of‘co-existence’: a tolerant society allows the
Introduction 29