Aquinas and Analogy

5. Kinds of Analogous Name

FIVE KINDS OF ANALOGOUS NAME Cajetan tells us that there are three kinds of analogous name, or perhaps four, only one of which is truly such. Others have proposed divisions of analogous names that differ from that of Cajetan, often becoming luxuriant by treating every instance of analogous name as if it were a separate type. When the question is put to the texts of St. Thomas, there is a straightforward answer. In the majority of texts, he tells us that there are two kinds of analogous name. Quod quidem dupliciter contingit in nominibus: vel quia multa habent proportionem ad unum, sicut sanum dicitur de medicina et urina, inquantum utrumque habet ordinem et proportionem ad sanitatem animalis , cuius hoc quidem signum est, illud vera causa; vel ex eo quod unum habet proportionem ad alterum, sicut sanum dicitur de medicina et animali , inquantum medicina est causa sanitatis quae est in animali. (ST, la, q. 13, a. 5, c) There are two ways in which names of this kind occur: either because many things have a proportion to one, as 'health' is said of medicine and urine insofar as both have an order of proportion to the health of the animal, of which the latter is a sign and the former a cause; or because one has a proportion to another, as 'healthy' is said of medicine and animal, insofar as medicine is the cause of the health which is in the animal. 102 KINDS OF ANALOGOUS NAME 103 We have already argued at length that Cajetan's attempt to find his threefold division of analogous names in a text of the Sentences commentary is mistaken. Nonetheless, there is a text in Quaestio disputata de veritate (q. 2, a. II) that has suggested to some that the twofold division is, as Cajetan took it to be, a subdivision rather than a division of analogous names. Cajetan, we remember, took plurium ad unum and unius ad alterum to be a subdivision of what he called analogy of attribution, which does not properly speaking exemplify analogy. Only when we move from proportion to proportionality do we move in the direction of a true understanding of analogous names. Many who have criticized Cajetan nonetheless retain this fundamental tenet of his interpretation. The Twofold Division Things are said to be named analogously or analogically when they share the same name and that name receives a number of accounts as said of them, accounts that are not wholly diverse. If they are not wholly diverse, it is because they are partly alike. In what does this sameness and diversity consist? By noting that a ratio or account of a term cannot be just another term, since that would simply put off the evil day when we must ask for an account of that term, it follows that any account must be complex. The account that is the definition is composed of genus and specific difference. Any account can be described as involving what is signified and the way it is signified: the res significata and the modus significandi. Thus, the abstract and concrete terms 'white' and 'whiteness' both signify the same thing, but differently. The account of 'white' is that which has whiteness whereas the account of 'whiteness' is that whereby white things are white. Since only concrete terms are directly predicated of subjects, analogous names will be exemplified by concrete terms. The general formula for the account of a concrete term is "that which has X," where X is what is signified and "that which has" is the way it is signified. In a pithy text, Thomas compares univocals, equivocals and analogously named things in terms of these considerations. Univocal GMT) 104 PART TWO: ANALOGOUS NAMES terms have the same res significata and the same way of signifying it in all the relevant uses; equivocal terms have different res significatae ; things are named analogously when their common name has the same res significata, which is signified in different ways in each of the accounts. That is a necessary condition of a name's beirig accounted analogous, but it is not sufficient. Not only is there a plurality of accounts when a name is used analogously, there is an order per prius et posterius among them. One of them takes precedence over the others. That precedence is revealed by the fact that while the primary meaning can be understood without reference to the others, they presuppose it. That presupposition , Thomas writes, is clear from the fact that...