Endnotes
1. Discussion of recognition received a decisive new start with Charles Taylor, "The Politics of Recognition" in
Multiculturalism and "The Politics of Recognition", ed. Amy Gutmann (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 25–74. A watershed debate occurred over Nancy Fraser's essay "Redistribution or Recognition?" in
Adding Insult to Injury: Nancy Fraser Debates her Critics (New York: Verso, 2008) as well as between Fraser and Axel Honneth in Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth,
Recognition or Redistribution? A Political-Philosophical Exchange (New York: Verso, 2003). All of these contributions and incisive essays stem from reworking the legacy of G. W. F. Hegel in the present day. For an account of Hegel's achievement, see Axel Honneth,
The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts, trans. Joel Anderson (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1996). Our proposal deserves expansion and criticism from the adoption of the Hegelian legacy of recognition in its psychoanalytic key by Alain Badiou and Slavoj Zizek, whose relevant works to our question are Alain Badiou:
Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil, trans. Peter Hallward (New York: Verso, 2002) and Slavoj Zizek, "Neighbors and Other Monsters: A Plea for Ethical Violence" in Kenneth Reinhard, Eric L. Santner, and Slavoj Zizek,
The Neighbor: Three Inquiries in Political Theology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), 134–190. Their approaches tend to treat Christianity as exemplifying whatever "religion" might be, an approach that glosses over the important differences between various religions. But see the efforts of Zizek to take up Islam in his new preface to Slavoj Zizek,
The Fragile Absolute: Or, Why the Chrstian Legacy is Worth Fighting For, 2nd Edition (New York: Verso, 2009).
2. See further discussion of misrecognition and moral reflection in Axel Honneth, Das Ich im Wir - Studien zur Anerkennungstheorie (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2010).
3. Karl Rahner did not intend in his exploration of the idea that Christians use this theory in dialogue. He intended it only as a matter for discussion among Christians.
4. Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life, trans. E. F. N. Jephcott (New York: Verso, 2005), 50.
5. Laura C. Thaut, "The Role of Faith in Christian Faith-Based Humanitarian Agencies: Constructing the Taxonomy," Voluntas: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations 20 (2009) 319–350.
6. Our conception of the relationship of liturgical and ethical acts owes much to Graham Ward's fruitful arguments. See Graham Ward, Cultural Transformation and Religious Practice (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2005) and Graham Ward, "A Christian Act: Politics and Liturgical Practice" in Liturgy, Time, and the Politics of Redemption, eds. Randi Rashkover and C. C. Pecknold (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 29–49.
7. Jacques Derrida devotes considerable effort to develop a hospitality that does not suffer from the patron-client relationship in many of his later writings. He hopes for a pure hospitality "without conditions" which occurs without planning and invitation. This hospitality is a pure openness to the stranger, to the surprise and uncalculated visit. For the most part, his efforts point out the failures of cosmopolitanism and hospitality rather than pointing out a successful way forward. Perhaps the best summary of these efforts is Jacques Derrida, "Une Hospitalité à L'Infini" in Manifeste pour l'Hospitalité, eds. Micheal Wieviorka and Mohammed Seffahi (Grigny: Paroles D'Aube, 1999) 97–106. Edith Wyschogrod provides a useful overview and criticism of Derrida. See Edith Wyschogrod, "Autochthony and Welcome: Discourses of Exile in Levinas and Derrida," Journal of Philosophy and Scripture 1 (2003) 36–42. On Levinas' own contribution to thought on hospitality, see D. J. Gauthier, "Levinas and the Politics of Hospitality," History of Political Thought 28 (2007) 158–180.
8. From a discussion of the pathologies of patron-client relationships in Howard F. Stein, "A Note on Patron-Client Theory," Ethos 12 (1984) 30–36.
9. Andrea Bieler and Luise Schottroff, The Eucharist: Bodies, Bread and Resurrection (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007).
10. See the extensive criticisms of Eucharistic ethics in Mark Godin, "The Sacrament is Always There: Towards a Eucharistic Ethic," Theology & Sexuality 14 (2007) 53–62; Bernd Wannenwetsch, Political Worship, trans. Margaret Kohl (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) 41–57.
11. Marcel Mauss, The Gift: The Reason for Form and Exchange in Archaic Societies, trans. W. D. Halls (New York: W. W. Norton, 1990). For an exposition of the Eucharist using the anthropological category of gift, see David N. Power, Sacrament: The Language of God's Giving (New York: Herder & Herder, 1999) 274–310.
12. For another attempt to develop an ethics of the gift in theology, see Oswald Bayer, "Ethik der Gabe" in Die Gabe: Ein "Urwort" der Theologie?, ed. Veronika Hoffmann (Frankfurt am Main: Otto Lembeck, 2009) 99–124.
13. This analysis is further developed in conjunction with political theology in my forthcoming article, Gregory Walter, "Critique and Promise in Paul Tillich's Political Theology: Engaging Giorgio Agamben on Sovereignty and Possiblity," Journal of Religion 90 (2010).
14. Martin Luther, Lectures on Romans (1515/1516) in WA 56, 45.15f.
15. Axel Honneth, "Recognition as Ideology" in Recognition and Power: Axel Honneth and the Tradition of Critical Social Theory, eds. Bert van den Brink and David Owen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007) 337. Honneth also puts it clearly that "[Recognition] thus means that the addressee is equipped with as much moral authority over one's person as one knows oneself to have in being obligated to carry out or abstain from certain classes of actions" in Axel Honneth, "Invisibility: On the Epistemology of 'Recognition'" in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes 75 (2001) 122.
16. Our proposal expands upon Dietrich Bonhoeffer's fragment, "Guilt, Justification, Renewal" in Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics, trans. Reinhard Krauss, Charles C. West, and Douglas W. Stott, eds. Ilse Tödt, Heinz Tödt, Ernst Feil, and Clifford Green (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005) 134–145.
17. On the coincidence of sovereignty and the control of territory, see Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, trans. David Macey (New York: Picador, 2003) and Giorgo Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998).
18. Paul Ricoeur's specific contribution to the dynamics of mutual recognition is to link the act of exchange and gift to that of mutual recognition. See Paul Ricoeur, The Course of Recognition, trans. David Pellauer (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 2005) 241–246.
©
September 2010
Journal of Lutheran Ethics
Volume 10, Issue 9