Aquinas and Analogy

7. Analogy is Analogous

SEVEN ANALOGY IS ANALOGOUS One of the weaknesses of Cajetan's presentation of analogous names is that he begins by saying that there are several kinds of analogous name. This is manifestly a weakness of the kind Socrates loved to exploit, ifthe various kinds of analogous name are species of a genus. But it is this that Cajetan wishes to deny. He is confronted , as he thinks, with an abuse of terminology. Latins are using Greek loan words in confusing ways. They-St. Thomas included, needless to say-speak of words that are equivocal ab uno or ad unum or in uno, as if they were analogous names. Cajetan says that they are not, not really, and the exclusion, as we saw in Chapter 2, reposes on Aristotelian usage. In the very passage in which we find the three kinds of deliberate equivocation just mentioned, Aristotle goes on to speak, and by way of contrast, of analogy. Despite the usage he laments, Cajetan seems to be saying that the Latins have made 'analogous name' equivocal. Analogy of attribution is no more really an analogy than the inequality of the species of a genus makes the generic name analogous. I recall all this to support the view that Cajetan does not seem to be saying that the 'analogous name' is an analogous term. But is 137 138 PART TWO: ANALOGOUS NAMES this all that clear? After all, Cajetan does introduce a gradation suggestive of per prius et posterius into his classification. That is why he begins with the 'analogy of inequality', the way species of a genus seem ordered despite the fact that they share the generic term equally. Omnia animalia aequaliter sunt animal, sed non aequalia animalia. To say that the generic name is really analogous would be to identify univocity and analogy. When he then takes up 'analogy of attribution', it is with a suggestion that, while not yet truly analogy, it is more so than 'analogy of inequality'. He turns finally to 'analogy of proportionality', which is truly analogy. But not quite. We must distinguish proper from improper proportionality . The latter, metaphor, is not analogy in the fully approved sense. Is it less abusively called analogy than analogy of attribution? Cajetan's schema invites such questions. If he himself did not explicitly ask how 'analogy' is shared by the three or four members of his division, the reason may well be that in order to hold that they are analogously analogy he would have had to employ what he calls analogy of attribution to make his point, a plurium ad unum. This would put him in the unenviable position of using 'analogy' abusively when he says that 'analogy' is analogous. If the question as to whether 'analogy' itself is an analogous term were of interest only as a heuristic device to maneuver through the Cajetanian division, one who is skeptical about the value of that division would find the question of diminished interest. But the remark is often encountered when analogy in St. Thomas is under discussion. When other texts collide with the texts on which one has elevated an interpretation, or when the chosen texts themselves prove resistant to understanding, the observation that, well, 'analogy ' is analogous, has the look of throwing in the sponge. The sense is that, try as we will, no unified and internally consistent account of what Thomas means by analogous names is possible. To ask at this point what 'analogy' means in the claim that 'analogy' is analogous can be dangerous to one's mental health. Nonetheless, the question is important. 'Analogy' is indeed an analogous term for St. Thomas. Seeing that and how it is so obviates many of the recurrent difficulties in explaining what he has written. It scarcely need be said, at this point of our inquiry, that to claim ANALOGY IS ANALOGOUS 139 that 'analogy' is analogous must be susceptible of a clear account. It is not a despairing cry from one who has given up the hope that there is a clear answer to what Thomas Aquinas means by analogy. At least it need not be. It should not be. It is the simple truth which, far from obscuring the question of analogy, casts a welcome explanatory light upon it. To query Thomas in his own manner on this point leads to this statement of the problem. When the term 'analogy' is found here and there in the texts, can all these occurrences be reduced to univocity...