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Analogy Today

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

Patrick J. Sherry
Patrick J. Sherry
Affiliation:
University of Lancaster
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Extract

During the last few years many writers have pointed out that notions like ‘family resemblance’, ‘open texture’ and ‘systematic ambiguity’ which play a considerable role in contemporary philosophy are akin to Aquinas' concept of analogy. Yet no one has made a thorough comparison between modern linguistic philosophy and the Thomistic doctrine of analogy. In this article I want to explore their relationship and to assess the value of the latter. Just how much has Aquinas to contribute to modern discussions about the nature of language and about God's attributes? And does modern philosophy of language destroy Aquinas' case, or can it rather be used to supplement it?

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 51 , Issue 198 , October 1976 , pp. 431 - 446
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1976

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References

1 Mclnerny, Ralph M., The Logic of Analogy (The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1961), p. 167Google Scholar.

2 Blackfriars, ed. of Summa Theologiae, Vol. III (London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1964), p. 106Google Scholar.

3 Le rôle de l'analogie en théologie dogmatique (Paris: Vrin, 1931), pp. 154ffGoogle Scholar.

4 On the other hand, he insists that all forms of perfection are linked with God's: he says both that creatures have their own intrinsic form of goodness and that God is ‘the first exemplary, effective and final principle of all goodness in creation’, so that all created goodness is named from divine goodness per analogiam (S.T. ia, vi, 4). Putting the matter in Cajetan's terminology we might say that goodness involves both Analogy of Proper Proportionality and Analogy of Attribution.

5 Actually, there is a third argument, that of the quarta via, where Aquinas argues both that there is something truest, best and noblest, and that this Being is the cause of all perfections in creatures, because ‘the maximum in any order is the cause of all the other realities of that order’ (S.T. Ia, ii, 3).

6 Similarly, Plato's insistence that we should make ourselves like the divine (Theaetetus, 176B; cf. Republic, 500C) may be compared with ‘Be ye perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect’ (Mt. v, 48; cf. Lk. vi, 36) and ‘we shall be like Him’ (I Jn., iii, 2). Both these authorities should deter theologians from making too great a separation between divine and human attributes.

7 The Knowledge of God, trans. Femiano, S. D. (London: Burns and Oates, 1969), p. 111Google Scholar.

8 See especially S.T. Ia, iii, 3, 5; iv, 3; iv, 3 ad 3; v, 6 ad 3; vi, 3; xiii, 4, 5, 5 ad 1 and 2, 6, 10; xvi, 6; Ia, 2ae, lxxxviii, 1 ad 1; C.G. I, 32; De Pot. VII., 4 ad 5 and 9; 7; 7 ad 2; I Sent. 22, 1, 3 ad 2; II Sent. 42, 1, 3. Quodl. II, a. 3.

9 ‘Predicability’, in Black, Max (ed.), Philosophy in America (London: Allen and Unwin, 1965) p. 263Google Scholar.

10 ‘On Ross's Theory of Analogy’, Journal of Philosophy 67, No. 20 (Oct. 1970), pp. 747–755CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Aquinas (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1955), pp. 129, 131Google Scholar.

12 This contrast is highly relevant to Kant's claim that we cannot attribute ‘understanding’ to God, because we can only conceive of an understanding like our own, which relies on the senses (Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, §57).

13 Philosophy of Language (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1964), pp. 22–25Google Scholar. For Aquinas' views of meaning see S.T. Ia, xiii, 1, 4; De Ver. IV, 1; IX. 4; De Pot. VIII, I;IX, 5.

14 I take it that this is Fr. Burrell's view, in his interesting recent book, Analogy and Philosophical Language (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1973)Google Scholar. Unfortunately his anxiety to grind an anti-Scotist axe prevents him from critically evaluating Aquinas' theory of meaning.

15 I owe these two references to Mclnerny, R., Studies in Analogy (The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1964)Google Scholar, Ch. I. I have found this chapter very helpful on the point in question.

16 See Alston, William, ‘The Elucidation of Religious Statements’, in Reese, W. L. and Freeman, E. (eds), Process and Divinity (La Salle: Open Court, 1964), pp. 429–443Google Scholar.