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Philosophy and Rhetoric 40.4 (2007) 434-438

Reviewed by
Christine Garlough
Department of Communication Arts
University of Wisconsin - Madison
The Life-Giving Gift of Acknowledgment. Michael J. Hyde. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2005. Pp. 336. $24.00, paperback.

Michael Hyde's long-awaited book The Life-Giving Gift of Acknowledgment opens with a simple and poignant question: "What would it be like if no one acknowledged your existence?" This question (re)turns throughout the text, asking readers to reflect upon the existential, psychological, and social ramifications of such a lack. How might one suffer as a result of being marginalized, ignored, or forgotten? What are the local, national, and global ramifications of widespread experiences of "social death"—"a state of being that materializes with . . . institutionalized forms of negative acknowledgment such as racism, sexism, and ageism?" What could (or should) you or I do to intervene? What might this doing risk? And do acts of acknowledgment or recognition risk enough?

This book extends Hyde's ongoing concern with how questions of Being, the gift, and calls of conscience might be understood in relation to rhetoric. Building upon past work, such as his award-winning book The Call of Conscience: Heidegger and Levinas, Rhetoric and the Euthanasia Debate, The Life-Giving Gift of Acknowledgment enriches audiences in rhetoric and philosophy two-fold. Most notably, it contributes substantially to an important set of debates about Hegel's conceptualization of Anerkennung and the nature of and distinctions between acknowledgment and recognition. The relationship between these two words—often used interchangeably in everyday language—has been the subject of much contention, as evidenced by the work of Calvin Schrag in religious studies, Stanley Cavill in philosophy, and Patchen Markell in political science, among others.

Hyde, thinking through the work of Martin Heidegger and Emmanuel Levinas with an eye toward Aristotle and the Sophists, offers a unique orientation on acknowledgment that reflects an abiding concern with human contingency, civic responsibility, rhetorical competence, and social well-being. That is, he explores a phenomenology of acknowledgment not only to understand the existential nature and function of this act, but also its connection to rhetorical practices in heightened moments of crisis and in the equally important (potentially [End Page 434] uncanny) mundane realm of the everyday. Thus, Hyde's thoughts upon the essential relationship between human being and Being wind through and illuminate his own experiences as student and teacher, occasions of historical import such as Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, and social tragedies like the Columbine High School massacre. In these moments, he argues, acknowledgment, as a way of being for others, shows itself to be "more than recognition." It embraces both humanity's vulnerability and our strength as individuals (through the caress) to address that fragility. In acknowledgment there is the potential for healing and hope essential to communal spirit, social activism, and the moral well-being of mankind.

Hyde's introduction opens by implicitly pointing to the polysemy of Hegel's word Anerkennung and marking the distinctions and tensions between the meanings of recognition and acknowledgment. Quoting Calvin Schrag, he argues that "the blurring of the grammar of acknowledgment with the grammar of recognition is one of the most glaring misdirections of modern epistemology" (2002, 117–18). This claim, troubling to some scholars of recognition, points toward work such as Ricoeur's The Course of Recognition where three major senses of the word recognition are outlined:

(1) To grasp (an object) with the mind, through thought, in joining together images, perceptions, having to do with it; to distinguish or identify the judgment or action, know it by memory. (2) To accept, take to be true (or take as such). (3) To bear witness through gratitude that one is indebted to someone for (something, an act).

(Ricouer 2005, 12)

Indeed, it would seem that key elements of this last definition resonate with the way that Hyde conceptualizes acknowledgement, particularly in his initial discussions of Being, beings, and the Other. Yet, as chapters unfold, Hyde asserts that it is precisely these concepts...

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