-
2. Analogy in Aristotle
- The Catholic University of America Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
TWO ANALOGY IN ARISTOTLE The working assumption of the De nominum analogia is that, since the Latin word analogia is borrowed from the Greek, it is Greek usage that is regulative. This assumption is clear from the way Cajetan speaks of the Latin use of the word as abusive, indeed as involving degrees of gaucherie, insofar as it departs more or less from the Greek. Whatever one might say of this as a principle of interpretation, it is only in its narrower implications that it interests us here. No great violence would be done to Cajetan's opusculum if we were to substitute "Aristotle" whenever he speaks of the Greeks. It is Aristotelian usage that is normative for Cajetan. How does this assumption affect our understanding of St. Thomas? Like his master Thomas, Cajetan held Aristotle in the highest esteem, and there is certainly nothing controversial about seeing Thomas as, at bottom, an Aristotelian. What is controversial, however , is the assumption that there is a one-to-one correspondence between Aristotle's use of the Greek analogia, and its cognates, and Thomas's use of the Latin anaiogia, analogice, secundum analogiam , etc. That Cajetan makes this assumption is clear from the way he chides Latin writers for departing from Aristotelian usage, a charge that must include St. Thomas himself. 30 ANALOGY IN ARISTOTLE 31 Cajetan is fully aware that oftentimes, when Thomas comments on Aristotle or simply refers to him, he speaks of analogous names when there is no occurrence of the Greek counterpart in the Aristotelian text despite the fact that the Latin is a loan word from the Greek. Cajetan's unfortunate assumption is that the texts in which Aristotle does speak of analogy should control our interpretation of the Thomistic passages where we find Thomas speaking of analogy, although analogia does not occur in the Aristotelian text being commented upon. Since our interest is to clarify what St. Thomas means by analogous names, we will examine some key passages in his Aristotelian commentaries in which he speaks of analogy where Aristotle has not. We will then look at some passages in Aristotle where analogy is discussed and ask if what is said is relevant to whatThomas means by analogous names. Our contention will be that the Thomistic doctrine of analogous names has its counterpart in Aristotle, though not in that terminology, and that Aristotle's doctrine of analogy, when he is using that term and its cognates, is not identical with the Thomistic doctrine of analogous names. Without Counterpart in Aristotle a. Physics III, 2oob32-2oIa3. In Book III of the Physics (20ob32-20Ia3), Aristotle turns to the study of motion or change and enumerates various kinds of it: substantial change, locomotion, quantitative change and qualitative change. "It is always with respect to substance or to quantity or to quality or to place that what changes changes. But it is impossible, as we assert, to find anything common to these that is neither 'this' nor quantum nor quale nor any of the other predicates. Hence neither will motion and change have reference to something over and above the things mentioned, for there is nothing over and above them." In commenting on this, Thomas says: His autem generibus non est accipere aliquod commune univocum, quod non contineatur sub aliquo praedicamento, quod sit genus eorum: sed ens est commune ad ea secundum anaiogiam, ut in IV Metaphys. ostendetur. (Ieerio I, n. 7) GMT) 32 PART ONE: PROLEGOMENA Nothing can be found that is common to these kinds which would be their genus and univocal; that which is common to them is not contained under a certain category: but being is common to them according to analogy, as is shown in Metaphysics IV. Change is not such a genus that the kinds of change coming under it are its species. If it were, 'change' would be predicated univocally of them. Thomas adds that 'being' is predicated of the categories in which change falls, but that it is analogously common to them. What interests us is the fact that Thomas refers to Metaphysics IV for textual grounding of the point. b. Metaphysics TV, 2, r003a33-br6. Clearly Thomas is thinking of Chapter Two of the Fourth Book where Aristotle addresses the following problem. How can there be, over and above natural science and mathematics, a science of being as being if being is not a genus? That being is not a genus is a truth developed in Book Three.! How can...