The Semantics of Analogy: Rereading Cajetan's De Nominum Analogia

Chapter Seven. The Semantics of Proportionality: The Proportional Unity of Concepts

122  — Chapter Seven The Semantics of Proportionality The Proportional Unity of Concepts We have seen that analogy of attribution is a species of equivocation in which the different concepts are related, so that the ratio of one appears in the definition of the others. This seems to be the most obvious mean between univocation and equivocation. But for Cajetan there is another mean: analogy of proportionality. This will turn out to be a truer mean between univocation and equivocation, so that the balance of Cajetan’s treatise on analogy expounds the unique semantic characteristics of this analogy, which cannot be subsumed under univocation and equivocation. In the present chapter, we will begin to examine Cajetan’s treatment of the definition of analogy of proportionality , and consider some common objections to the “proportional similarity” or “proportional unity” invoked in that definition. “Analogy” Is an Analogous Term In turning to analogy of proportionality we are, Cajetan says, “ascending from what is abusively to what is properly analogy.”1 Why this mode of analogy is the most “proper” we have already anticipated: it is expected to meet the semantic challenge that neither analogy of inequality nor analogy of attribution could meet. Our judgment of whether this mode of analogy meets this challenge in fact must be Proportionality: The Proportional Unity of Concepts — 123 deferred until it has been presented in greater detail, but at the beginning it will be useful to clarify what Cajetan means by saying that certain uses of a term are “proper” and others are “abusive.” This is especially important because Cajetan’s mention of an “abuse” (abusio) of terms, or of things “abusively” (abusive) so-called, can help us better understand, if not the semantics, at least the genesis and use of analogous terms. This is also important, because Cajetan’s language has the potential to mislead. In De Nominum Analogia, Cajetan uses “abusio” or its cognates several times. For instance, he says that many names are called analogous “abusively” (abusive, §2); he says that it is an “abuse” (abusio) of vocabulary to treat signifying per prius et posterius as synonymous with signifying analogically (§7); he says that counting analogy of attribution as a kind of analogy is an “abusive” (abusiva) locution (§21); and, as noted, he says that to ascend from analogy of in­equality, through analogy of attribution, to analogy of proportionality, is to ascend to the proper from the “abusive” (abusive) forms of analogy (§23). In all of these cases, the point seems to be that “analogy” is itself analogical.2 Originally (in Greek) proper to mathematics and meaning “proportion ,” the term “analogia” was extended to cover other things.3 Indeed , Cajetan implies that part of the difficulty of explaining what the term means is that it has been extended to cover such a variety of things that it would be confusing to try to unify them with a common definition.4 What is being discussed is the development of language, a term’s being stretched to cover things that it would not cover in its original, or strict, sense. Cajetan’s “abusio,” then, need not call to mind the moral connotations of English “abuse.” To say that a term is used abusive (“abusively”) is not to say that people who so use it are “abusers of language.”5 It is not even to say that the term is used illicitly, but only irregularly, loosely, or in a manner at some remove from its most proper use.6 That employing an improper sense of a term is not abusing language, or misusing language, is obvious from the legitimacy of poetic or metaphorical usage.7 This is especially true if a particular use of a term is abusive or improper only from the etymological, or strictly technical point of view, but not from the point of view of established use. This observation , and Cajetan’s discussion of the meaning of “analogy” in general, 124  — Cajetan’s Answer illuminates a general point about the genesis of analogous terms. Terms become analogical by a process of extension; they are extended from one, original signification to cover another, new signification. Some of these extensions are more fitting than others. What determines the fittingness or “propriety” of such an extension is not only the original meaning of the term, or its etymology, but the similarity of what is signified in what is originally denominated by the term to what...