ABSTRACT

Joshua Daniel ponders whether the recognition of others entails reducing their difference and foreclosing novel interactions or if it can lead to relations that delight in difference? To answer this question, Daniel turns to the American, Protestant theologian Jonathan Edwards (1708–1758). In Daniel’s interpretation of Edwards’s psychological analogy of the Trinity, God can be understood as a structure of recognition: God is God insofar as God the Father recognizes himself in God the Son, whose mutual delight generates the Holy Spirit. God shares this recognition by drawing us to become participants. Daniel, following Edwards, argues that virtue is a matter of such participation. Insofar as we become virtuously recognitive, we can relate to others as potentially divine, thereby unsettling our finite and human identities. At the same time, we recognize that in situations of historical-social disparity, particular identities might need to be affirmed and delighted in rather than disrupted.