Studies in Analogy by Ralph McInerny (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 777 Studies in Analogy. By RALPH MciNERNY. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1968. Pp. 147. 19.80 guilders. Like his earlier work on analogy, The Logic of Analogy, Professor Mcinerny's recent penetrating book, Studies in Analogy concentrates on Aquinas's doctrine of analog-y. Basically, though not exclusively, Studies in Analogy deals with two exegetical problems in Aquinas's teaching on analogy. First and foremost, it confronts the difficult and crucial problem of whether or not Aquinas holds that there is a ratio communis (common notion) in an analogous name, and if he does, how the medieval doctor then distinguishes the ratio communis of an analogous name from the ratio communis of an univocal generic term. Second, Mcinerny investigates the question of the relationship of analogy to metaphor in St. Thomas. Concretely, he asks whether for Aquinas a metaphor is a kind of analogous name or whether it is to be distinguished from an analogous name. As regards the first problem, Mcinerny first brings the issue of the ratio communis of an analogous name into sharp focus by carefully citing a number of Thomistic texts which seem to conflict openly on the question of whether or not there is a ratio communis in an analogous name. Rejecting the view that these texts are really incompatible with each other and that their differences are to be explained in terms of a change of mind on the part of St. Thomas, Mcinerny contends that the prima facie inconsistency dissolves once one realizes that Aquinas distinguishes two senses of ratio communis, i. e., the ratio communis of an analogous name and the ratio communis of an univocal generic name. But the problem is exactly how St. Thomas distinguishes them. In other words, precisely how does Aquinas say the way something analogously common to many differs from what is univocally common? This can only be answered, Mcinerny holds, by first understanding what St. Thomas means by "analogically common" (as opposed to "univocally common"). But now if, as Aquinas says, the distinguishing mark of an analogous as opposed to an univocal name is that it does not signify one notion common to many but rather several notions related as prior and posterior, then how is it even meaningful to speak of the ratio communis of an analogous name or of something which is analogically common? Using "healthy" as an example in the statements (1) "The dog is healthy," (!2) "Food is healthy," and (3) "A cold nose is healthy," Mcinerny suggests that sense can be made of saying that " healthy " here is analogically common by identifying the ratio communis of " healthy " with" related in some way to health." Stated generally, the ratio communi~ of an analogous name is the res significata (the essence or nature) taken together with " a variable whose values would be determinate modi symficandi ." (p. 102) In other words, "being related in some indeterminate way to health " is what the subject terms of the above statements have 778 BOOK REVIEWS in common, even though, of course, they do not have health itself in common. In the sense described then, St. Thomas can speak of the ratio communis of a term which is predicated analogously. By contrast, the ratio communis of what signifies univocally according to Mcinerny (and, I take it, Aquinas too) is identical with its ratio propria. Thus in (4) "The dog is healthy," (5) "The cat is healthy," and (6) "The horse is healthy," the ratio communis is the nature health together with a determinate way of signifying it, i.e., " subject of health." Thus, what is common to the dog, the cat and the horse is that each of them is a subject of health. Nevertheless, to this way of distinguishing the ratio communis of an univocal name from that of an analogous name it may be objected that the distinction is made possible in the first place only by falsely identifying what is univocally common with the res significata together with the usual mode of signifying it. For while it is true that the subject terms in, say, (4), (5), and (6) above are alike in being "subjects of health," still, someone might insist that only...