## 1. Medieval Theories of Language



Medieval logicians and philosophers of language were principally
concerned with the relationship between utterances, concepts, and
things. Written language was only of secondary importance. They agreed
that spoken language was conventional, having its origin in
imposition, or the decision to correlate certain sounds with certain
objects. Concepts, however, were natural, in the sense that all human
beings with similar experiences had the same concepts, without any
decision being involved. The key semantic notion was signification,
rather than meaning, though translated sources tend to obscure this by
translating 'significatio' as 'meaning'. For a
term to signify is for it to function as a sign, to represent or make
known something beyond itself. A typical spoken term, such as
'horse' or 'dog', signifies in two ways. It
signifies or makes known the concept with which it has to be
correlated in order to function significatively at all, and it also
signifies or makes known something external to and independent of the
mind. Modifications were made to this simple scheme to cover the cases
of special terms, including syncategorematic terms, such as
'every' and 'not', fictional terms such as
'chimera', and privative terms such as
'blindness'; and modifications were also made to cover the
case of special predicates, such as "is a genus", or
"is thought about", but we need not concern ourselves with
these modifications here.



Theories of signification were complicated by the metaphysical problem
of common natures. If we say that words signify not only concepts but
things external to and independent of the mind do we mean that
'human being' and 'tall' signify special
common objects such as humanity or tallness, or do we mean that they
signify Socrates and his quality of being tall? For Aquinas, who did
not want to give common natures any kind of intermediary existence
independent of both concepts and actual things, the significate
(*significatum*) of a term was the intellect's conception
(whether simple or definitional) of the thing signified; the thing
signified (*res significata*) was usually the property or the
nature characterizing individual external objects; and the referent
(*suppositum*) was the individual external object itself,
viewed as the bearer of the property or nature. However,'human
being' cannot be said to  *signify*  Socrates, since the
mind cannot conceive physical individuals as such. In the fourteenth
century, further developments took place. There was a new focus on the
notion of a mental language superior to spoken language, and concepts,
as parts of this mental language, were themselves regarded as having
signification. Moreover, Scotists and nominalists agreed that, at
least in principle, physical individuals could be conceived as such.
William of Ockham and his followers not only denied the existence of
common natures but insisted that spoken words did not signify
concepts. As a result, both spoken words and the concepts to which
spoken words are subordinated have the same significates, namely
individual things and their individual properties, such as the
tallness of Socrates. Other nominalists, notably Buridan, insisted
that spoken words did signify concepts as well as individuals, for
concepts are required to mediate between spoken words and individual
things.



In addition to having signification, terms were also said to have
modes of signifying (*modi significandi*). These modes of
signifying were related to the term's logical and grammatical
functions, and include such essential features as being a noun, verb,
or adjective, and such accidental features as time (which includes
tense without being limited to it), gender, and case. More generally,
they included being abstract (e.g., justice) and concrete (e.g.,
just). They also include modes of predication, related to
Aristotle's ten categories, such as substantial (e.g., horse),
qualitative (e.g., brown), quantitative (e.g., square), relative and
so on. The notion of modes of signifying was developed from the early
twelfth century on, though it was specially emphasized by the
speculative grammarians of the late thirteenth century.



It is important to recognize that medieval thinkers had a
compositionalist view of language signification, and so words were
thought to be endowed as units both with their signification and with
nearly all their modes of signifying in advance of the role they would
subsequently play in propositions. Moreover, the doctrine of common
natures suggested that terms, at least those terms which seem to fall
within Aristotle's ten categories (substance, quality, quantity
and so on), each correspond to a common nature and so have a
signification which is fixed and precise. This meant that questions of
use and context, though explored by medieval logicians especially
through supposition theory, were not thought to be crucial to the
determination of a term as equivocal, analogical or univocal. It also
meant that terms which did not fit into Aristotle's categorial
framework needed a special account. This problem relates especially to
theology, because God was thought to transcend the categories in the
sense that none of them apply to him, and also to metaphysics, because
of the so-called transcendental terms, 'being',
'one', 'good'. These transcend the categories
in the sense that they belong no more to one category than to another,
and they do not correspond to common natures.


## 2. Problems in Logic, Theology, and Metaphysics



In order to understand how the theory of analogy arose we have to bear
in mind the history of education in the Latin-speaking western part of
Europe. During the so-called dark ages, learning was largely confined
to monasteries, and people had access to very few texts from the
ancient world. This situation had changed dramatically by the
beginning of the thirteenth century. The first universities (Bologna,
Paris, Oxford) had been established, and the recovery of the writings
of Aristotle supplemented by the works of Islamic philosophers was
well under way.



One source for the theory of analogy is the doctrine of equivocal
terms found in logic texts. Until the early twelfth century, the only
parts of Aristotle's logic to be available in Latin were the
*Categories* and *On Interpretation*, supplemented by a
few other works including the monographs and commentaries of Boethius.
The *Categories* opens with a brief characterization of terms
used equivocally, such as 'animal' used of real human
beings and pictured human beings, and terms used univocally, such as
'animal' used of human beings and oxen. In the first case,
the spoken term is the same but there are two distinct significates or
intellectual conceptions; in the second case, both the spoken term and
the significate are the same. We should note that equivocal terms
include homonyms (two words with the same form but different senses,
e.g., 'pen'), polysemous words (one word with two or more
senses), and, for medieval thinkers, proper names shared by different
people. By the mid-twelfth century the rest of Aristotle's logic
had been recovered, including the *Sophistical Refutations* in
which Aristotle discusses three types of equivocation and how these
contribute to fallacies in logic. For writers throughout the later
middle ages, the discussion of analogical terms was fitted into the
framework of univocal and equivocal terms provided by Aristotle and
his commentators. We will return to this below.



Twelfth-century theology is another important source for the doctrine
of analogy, for twelfth-century theologians such as Gilbert of
Poitiers and Alan of Lille explored the problem of divine language in
depth. Their work initially sprang from works on the Trinity by
Augustine and Boethius. These authors insisted that God is absolutely
simple, so that no distinctions can be made between God's
essence and his existence, or between one perfection, such as
goodness, and another, such as wisdom, or, more generally, between God
and his properties. New attention was also paid to Greek theologians,
especially Pseudo-Dionysius. These theologians insisted on God's
absolute transcendence, and on what came to be called negative
theology. We cannot affirm anything positive about God, because no
affirmation can be appropriate to a transcendent being. It is better
to deny properties of God, saying for instance that he is not good
(i.e., in the human sense), and still better to say that God is not
existent but super-existent, not substance but super-substantial, not
good but super-good. These theological doctrines raised the general
problem of how we can speak meaningfully of God at all, but they also
raised a number of particular problems. Must we say that "God is
justice" means the same as "God is just"? Must we
say that "God is just" means the same as "God is
good"? Can we say that God is just and that Peter is just as
well? For our purposes, this last question is the most important, for
it raises the question of one word used of two different
realities.



The third source for doctrines of analogy is metaphysics. The first
part of Aristotle's *Metaphysics* had been translated by
the mid-twelfth century, though the full text was recovered only
gradually. One crucial text is found in *Metaphysics* 4.2
(1003a33-35): "There are many senses (*multis
modis*) in which being (*ens*) can be said, but they are
related to one central point (*ad unum*), one definite kind of
thing, and are not equivocal. Everything which is healthy is related
to health.... and everything which is medical to
medicine...." In this text, Aristotle raises the general
problem of the word 'being' and its different senses, and
he also introduces what is known as *pros hen* equivocation or
focal meaning, the idea that different senses may be unified through a
relationship to one central sense. Another foundational text is from
Avicenna's *Metaphysics*, also translated into Latin
during the twelfth century, where he writes that being (*ens*)
is neither a genus nor a predicate predicated equally of all its
subordinates, but rather a notion (*intentio*) in which they
agree according to the prior and the posterior. As we shall see below,
this reference to the prior and the posterior is particularly
important.



Some further background for the development of doctrines of analogy is
provided by Aristotle's discussion of scientific reasoning in
his *Posterior Analytics*, first commented on in the 1220s by
Robert Grosseteste. One important issue was how analogical relations
might be used to find a way of referring to things which did not
belong to one genus and lacked a common name. A popular example
throughout the middle ages involved Aristotle's account of the
relation between the 'bone' of a cuttlefish, a spine, and
a normal bone (*Posterior Analytics*, 14.2, 98a20-23),
though there was some disagreement about the type of analogy involved.
Even more important was Aristotle's view that scientific
reasoning requires demonstrative syllogisms, which, in order to be
logically valid, must have a middle term that avoids the fallacy of
equivocation. How far analogical terms could fill that role was a
frequent topic of discussion and controversy. In the thirteenth
century, in his questions on Aristotle's *Physics*,
Geoffrey of Aspall remarked that analogy did not rule out univocity or
prevent a subject from being one, while in the early fourteenth
century, Scotus preferred to preserve unity by abandoning the use of
analogical terms. In the late fifteenth century Cajetan strongly
supported the claim that analogical terms could function as middle
terms. None of these authors suggested that natural science and
theology could appeal to analogical relationships to produce
probabilistic rather than demonstrative arguments.


## 3. History of the Word 'Analogy'



The Latin term '*analogia*' had various senses. In
scriptural exegesis, according to Aquinas, analogy was the method of
showing that one part of scripture did not conflict with another. In
rhetoric and grammar, analogy was the method of settling a doubt about
a word's form by appeal to a similar and more certain case.
Several twelfth-century theologians use the word in this sense. In
translations of Pseudo-Dionysius, the term had a strictly ontological
sense, for it refers to a being's capacity for participation in
divine perfections as this relates to lower or higher beings. In
logic, authors were aware that the Greek word
'analogia',
sometimes called '*analogia*' in Latin, but often
translated as '*proportio*' or
'*proportionalitas*', referred to the comparison
between two proportions. However, by the 1220s the word came to be
linked with the phrase "in a prior and a posterior sense"
and by the 1250s terms said according to a comparison of proportions
were normally separated from terms said according to a prior and a
posterior sense.



The phrase "in a prior and a posterior sense" seems to
have been derived from Arabic philosophy. H.A. Wolfson has presented
evidence for Aristotle's recognition of a type of term
intermediate between equivocal and univocal terms, some instances of
which were characterized by their use according to priority and
posteriority. He showed that Alexander of Aphrodisias called this type
of term 'ambiguous' and that the Arabic philosophers,
starting with Alfarabi, made being said in a prior and a posterior
sense the main characteristic of all ambiguous terms. So far as the
medieval Latin west is concerned, the main sources for the notion of
an ambiguous term said in a prior and a posterior sense are Algazel
and Avicenna, both of whom became known in the second half of the
twelfth century, and both of whom used the notion to explain uses of
the word 'being'.



The word 'analogical' soon became linked with the word
'ambiguous' in Latin authors. Speaking of the cuttlefish
example in his commentary on Aristotle's *Posterior
Analytics*, Grosseteste says that Aristotle's use of analogy
to find a common term produces ambiguous names said according to a
prior and a posterior sense, and he uses the phrase
"*ambiguum analogum*". In the same decade, the
*Glossa* of the theologian Alexander of Hales links being said
in a prior and a posterior sense with ambiguity and (in one possibly
unreliable manuscript) with analogy, and the writings of Philip the
Chancellor also link being said in a prior and a posterior sense with
analogy. In logic textbooks, the word 'analogy' in the new
sense appears in the *Summe metenses*, once dated around 1220,
but now thought to be by Nicholas of Paris, writing between 1240 and
1260. The new use of 'analogy' rapidly became standard in
both logicians and theologians.


## 4. Divisions of Equivocation



In order to understand the way in which theories of analogy developed,
we need to consider the divisions of equivocation found in medieval
authors. In his commentary on the *Categories*, Boethius
presented a series of divisions which he took from Greek authors. The
first division was into chance equivocals and deliberate equivocals.
In the first case, the occurrences of the equivocal term were totally
unconnected, as when a barking animal, a marine animal, and a
constellation were all called '*canis*' (dog).
Chance equivocation was also called pure equivocation, and it was
carefully distinguished from analogy by later writers. In the second
case, that of deliberate equivocation, some intention on the part of
the speakers was involved, and the occurrences of the equivocal term
could be related in various ways. Boethius himself gave four
subdivisions. These are found in various later sources, including
Ockham's commentary on the *Categories*, but as we shall
see, other subdivisions became more popular.



The first of Boethius's four subdivisions was similitude, used
of the case of the noun 'animal' said of both real human
beings and pictured human beings. Medieval logicians seem to have been
totally unaware of the fact that the Greek word used by Aristotle was
genuinely polysemous, meaning both animal and image, and they
explained the extended use of 'animal' in terms of a
likeness between the two referents -- a likeness which had
nothing to do with the significate of the term 'animal',
which picks out a certain kind of nature, but which was nonetheless
more than metaphorical in that the external shape of the pictured
object does correspond to that of the living object. Those medieval
authors whose discussion of equivocation was very brief tended to use
this example, and they often claimed that Aristotle introduced it in
order to accommodate analogy as a kind of equivocation. On the other
hand, authors whose discussion was more extensive tended to drop both
the example and the subdivision of similitude.



Boethius's second type of equivocation is
'*analogia*' in the Greek sense, and the standard
example was the word '*principium*' (principle or
origin), which was said to apply to unity with respect to number and
to point with respect to a line, or to both the source of a river and
the heart of an animal. '*Principium*' is a noun
and, as such, might be expected to pick out a common nature, but
although a unity, a point, a source and a heart can all be called
'*principium*' with equal propriety, there is no
common nature involved. Mathematical objects, rivers, and hearts,
represent not merely different natural kinds, but different
categories, in that mathematical objects fall under the category of
quantity, and hearts at least under the category of substance. What
allows these disparate things to be grouped together is a similarity
of relations: a source is to a river as a heart is to an animal
-- or so it was claimed. While theologians, including Aquinas
himself in *De veritate*, and the fourteenth-century Dominican
Thomas Sutton, occasionally make use of this type of analogy, most
logicians do not even mention it.



The last two subdivisions found in Boethius are 'of one
origin' (*ab uno*), with the example of the word
'medical', and 'in relation to one' (*ad
unum*), with the example of the word 'healthy'. These
subdivisions correspond to Aristotle's *pros hen*
equivocation. The example 'healthy' (*sanum*) as
said of animals, their diet, and their urine is particularly important
here. 'Sanum', like other adjectives, was classified as a
concrete accidental term. As such, it did not fall within an
Aristotelian category, since its primary signification had two
elements whose combination was variously explained. On the one hand,
some kind of reference is made to the abstract entity health, which
belongs to the category of quality; on the other hand, some kind of
reference is made to an external object which belongs to the category
of substance. This dual reference precludes the term from picking out
a natural kind, though in the case of other adjectives, such as
'brown', no problem is caused thereby. Brown things may
not form a natural kind, but at least they are all physical objects,
and 'brown' is used in the same sense of each one.
'Healthy', however, is more complicated. To say that Rover
is healthy is to say that Rover is a thing having health, and
obviously this analysis can't be applied to diet, which is
called healthy only because it causes health in an animal, or to
urine, which is called healthy only when it is the sign of health in
an animal. Whatever the properties which characterize urine and food,
they are different from those characterizing the animal.



We should also note that in the same passage of his commentary on the
*Categories*, Boethius linked deliberate equivocation with
metaphor, in which the sense of one word with an established
signification was extended to apply improperly to something else. A
favourite medieval example was 'smiling' said of flowering
meadows. Later logicians supported this link between equivocation and
metaphor by an appeal to Aristotle's divisions of equivocation
in his *Sophistical Refutations*, where he remarked that the
second type was based on common usage. As we shall see, the question
of metaphor's relation to analogy became particularly important
in post-thirteenth-century discussions.


## 5. Divisions of Analogy



Boethius's subdivisions had one major failure: they did not seem
to accommodate the different uses of the word 'being'
(*ens*). As a result, many authors used a new threefold
division which included Boethius's last two subdivisions and one
more. They presented the division as a division of deliberate
equivocals, and they identified deliberate equivocals with analogical
terms. This threefold division of analogy was established in the
thirteenth century, in response to a remark by Averroes in his
commentary on the *Metaphysics* to the effect that Aristotle
had classified 'healthy' as a case of relationship to one
thing as an end, 'medical' as a case of relationship to
one thing as an agent, and 'being' (*ens*) as a
case of relationship to one subject. It is found in Thomas
Aquinas's own commentary on the *Metaphysics*, as well as
in his fifteenth-century follower Capreolus. An analogical term is now
seen as one which is said of two things in a prior and a posterior
sense, and it is grounded in various kinds of attribution or
relationship to the primary object: food is healthy as a cause of a
healthy animal, a procedure is medical when applied by a medical
agent, a quality has being by virtue of the existent substance that it
characterizes.



A second threefold division of analogy arose from reflection on the
relationship between equivocal and analogical terms. Analogical terms
were said to be intermediaries between equivocal and univocal terms,
and the standard view was that analogical terms were intermediary
between chance equivocals and univocals, and hence that they were to
be identified with deliberate equivocals. The notion of an
intermediary term, however, is open to more than one interpretation,
and some authors went further in suggesting that at least some
analogical terms were intermediary between univocals and deliberate
equivocals, so that they were not equivocal in any of the normal
senses at all. Towards the end of the thirteenth century, an anonymous
commentator on the *Sophistical Refutations* gives the
following classification. First, there are analogical terms which are
univocal in a broad sense of 'univocal'. Here reference
was made to genus terms such as 'animal'. Human beings and
donkeys participate equally in the common nature animal, but are not
themselves equal, since human beings are more perfect than donkeys.
This type of analogy was routinely discussed in response to a remark
Aristotle had made in *Physics* VII (249a22-25) which, in
Latin translation, asserted that many equivocations are hidden in a
genus. Medieval logicians felt obliged to fit this claim into the
framework of equivocation and analogy, even if the consensus was that
in the end the use of genus terms was univocal. Second, there are
those analogical terms such as 'being' (*ens*)
which are not equivocal, because only one concept or nature
(*ratio*) seems to be involved, and which are not univocal
either, because things participate this one *ratio* unequally,
in a prior and a posterior way. It is these terms which are the
genuine intermediaries. Third, there are those analogical terms which
are deliberate equivocals, because there are two concepts or natures
(*rationes*) which are participated in a prior and a posterior
way. The example here was 'healthy'. This second threefold
division was much discussed. Duns Scotus bitterly criticized it in his
earlier logical writings. Walter Burley claimed that both the first
and the second kinds of analogical term could properly be regarded as
univocal in a wide sense. The division was popular in the fifteenth
century with such Thomists as Capreolus, who realized its closeness to
the account given by Aquinas in his *Sentences* commentary.


## 6. Thomas Aquinas



Despite the vast modern literature devoted to Aquinas's theory
of analogy, he has very little to say about analogy as such. He uses a
general division into equivocal, univocal, and analogical uses of
terms, and he presents both of the threefold divisions of analogy
mentioned in the previous section, but he offers no prolonged
discussion, and he writes as if he is simply using the divisions,
definitions, and examples with which everyone is familiar. His
importance lies in the way he used this standard material to present
an account of the divine names, or how it is we can meaningfully use
such words as 'good' and 'wise' of God.



The background to this account has to be understood in terms of
Aquinas's theology and metaphysics. Three doctrines are
particularly important. First, there is the distinction between being
existent, good, wise, and so on, essentially, and being existent,
good, wise, and so on, by participation. God is whatever he is
essentially, and as a result he is existence itself, goodness itself,
wisdom itself. Creatures are existent, good, wise, only by sharing in
God's existence, goodness, and wisdom, and this sharing has
three features. It involves a separation between the creature and what
the creature has; it involves a deficient similarity to God; and it is
based on a causal relation. What is essentially existent or good is
the cause of what has existence or goodness by participation. Second,
there is the general doctrine of causality according to which every
agent produces something like itself. Agent causality and similarity
cannot be separated. Third, there is Aquinas's belief that we
are indeed entitled to claim that God is existent, good, wise, and so
on, even though we cannot know his essence.



Against this background, Aquinas asks how we are to interpret the
divine names. He argues that they cannot be purely equivocal, for we
could not then make intelligible claims about God. Nor can they be
purely univocal, for God's manner of existence and his
relationship to his properties are sufficiently different from ours
that the words must be used in somewhat different senses. Hence, the
words we use of God must be analogical, used in different but related
senses. To be more precise, it seems that such words as
'good' and 'wise' must involve a relationship
to one prior reality, and they must be predicated in a prior and a
posterior sense, for these are the marks of analogical terms.



Nonetheless, the divine names do not function exactly like ordinary
analogical terms such as 'healthy'. We need to begin by
making use of the distinction between the thing signified (a nature or
property) and the mode of signifying. All the words we use have a
creaturely mode of signifying in that they imply time and composition,
neither of which can pertain to God. When speaking of God, we must
recognize this fact, and attempt to discount it. To say "God is
good" is not to imply that God has a separable property,
goodness, and that he has it in a temporally limited way. God is
eternally identical to goodness itself. But even when we have
discounted the creaturely mode of signifying, we are left with the
fact that God's goodness is not like our goodness. 



One major controversy over Aquinas's writings concerns the variation
in his writings over the roles analogy of attribution and analogy of
proportionality (or analogy in the Greek sense). In his early
writings, Aquinas questioned whether the standard account of the
analogy of attribution was sufficient for his purposes. In his
commentary on the *Sentences*, he suggests that there is one
kind of analogy in which the analogical term is used in a prior and a
posterior sense, and another kind of analogy, the analogy of
imitation, which applies to God and creatures. In his *De
veritate*, he argues that the analogy of attribution involves a
determinate relation, which cannot hold between God and creatures, and
that the analogy of proportionality must be used for the divine names.
We must compare the relation between God and his properties to the
relation between creatures and their properties. It has been argued
that Aquinas discovered that this solution was deeply flawed, given
that the problem of divine names arises precisely because the
relationship of God to his properties is so radically different from
our relation to our properties. Accordingly, in his later discussions
of the divine names, notably in the *Summa contra gentiles* and
the *Summa theologiae*, Aquinas returns to the analogy of
attribution, but links it much more closely with his doctrines of
causal similitude. Montagnes has pointed
outthat Aquinas came to place much greater
emphasis on agent causation, the active transmission of properties
from God to creatures, than on exemplar causality, the
creature's passive reflection or imitation of God's
properties. In this context, Aquinas makes considerable use of his
ontological distinction between univocal causes, whose effects are
fully like them, and non-univocal causes, whose effects are not fully
like them. God is an analogical cause, and this is the reality that
underlies our use of analogical language. Other scholars, notably
Hochschild, have argued that Aquinas never abandons the doctrine of
the *De Veritate*. Citing passages in the *Summa
Theologiae*that explicitly employ analogy of proportionality,
Hochschild argues that Aquinas appeals to one or another
classification of analogy based on the dialectical context of his
remarks. Where the context calls for addressing the causal
relationship between God and creatures, Aquinas appeals to
classifications of analogy of attribution. Where the context calls for
addressing the formal structure of the similarity between God and
creatures, Aquinas appeals to analogy of proportionality. Hochschild
argues furthermore that there is an asymmetrical relationship between
analogy of proportionality and the forms of analogy of attribution
that involve cause and effect relationships between analogates.
Analogy of proportionality can occur with or without causal
relationships between the analogates. (E.g. There is an analogy of
proportionality between the intellect's act of seeing and the eye's
act of seeing, but no causal relationship between them.) However,
cause and effect relationships between analogates in an analogy of
attribution always presuppose an analogy of proportionality as the
formal structure of the similarity between the analogate that is the
cause and the analogate that is the effect. 



Another controversy over Aquinas's writings on analogy concerns
his explicit statements in some passages (notably in
the *Summa Theologiae*) that one analogate is included in
the definition of the other analogate or analogates. Specifically, the
analogate of which the term is said in a prior way must be
included in the definition of the posterior analogate or analogates,
just as the definition of healthy food includes a reference to the
healthiness of an animal. There are two grounds for the
controversy. One is that Aquinas also explicitly denies (notably
in the *De Veritate*) that the rule that one analogate
appears in the definition of the others applies to cases of names said
of God and creatures. Another ground is that it is simply difficult to
see how the rule could apply to names said of God and creatures given
Aquinas's insistence (including in the *Summa Theologiae*) that
these names are not said of God only by relation to creatures nor are
they said of creatures only by relation to God. One proposed solution
to the difficulty of fitting the definition of a name as said of God
into the definition of a name as said of a creature draws on Aquinas's
doctrine of participation through agent causality.
Althoughthe reference to God in the definition
of the creatureis not direct or explicit, it
occurs throughour recognition that when
humans are said to be good, this means that they have a participated
goodness which must be caused by that which is goodness itself. The
nature of this causal relation between God and creature
explains the sense in which terms are said in a prior way of God.
Soas far as imposition is concerned, terms are
given their signification on the basis of creaturely effects, and,
before we learn about God, we may think that their prior use is to
refer to creaturely perfections. However, when we come to know God as
the first cause and fully perfect being, we recognize that their prior
application is to God. The sixteenth-century Thomist Francis Sylvester of
Ferrara proposes that the naming of the creature by reference to God
involves a distinct act of imposition of signification upon a name
from the original act of imposition. A merit of this approach is
that ithelps us to explain Aquinas's insistence on
the distinction between the analogy of many-to-one and the analogy of
one-to-another. In the first case, both food and medicine are said to
be healthy because each is related to something else, the health of an
animal. In the second case, food is said to be healthy because of its
relation to the health of an animal. Only the second kind of analogy
applies to the divine names, for no non-metaphorical name that we
apply to God can ever be explained in terms of something other than
God. Our use of divine names has to reflect God's absolute
priority.


## 7. John Duns Scotus and the Role of Concepts



One of the issues that Aquinas touched on but did not settle was that
of the number of *rationes* an analogical term was associated
with. This issue stems from Aristotle's
*Categories*. As translated by Boethius, Aristotle introduced
the distinction between univocal and equivocal terms by claiming that
whereas univocal terms were subordinated to one *substantiae
ratio*, equivocal terms were subordinated to more than one
*substantiae ratio*. The word '*ratio*' here
is capable of various interpretations, including 'definition or
description', 'analysis', or 'concept',
but by the early fourteenth century logicians and theologians came to
agree that the appropriate interpretation was 'concept'.
The second threefold division of analogy given above suggests the
importance of a focus on concepts; and the question of how many
concepts an analogical term was subordinated to came to be central.
The nominalists held that so-called analogical terms were either
metaphorical or were straightforwardly equivocal terms subordinated to
two distinct concepts, but the Thomists were split. Analogical terms
could be viewed as subordinated to an ordered cluster of concepts
(possibly but not necessarily described as a disjunction of concepts);
or they could be subordinated to a single concept which represents in
a prior and a posterior manner (*per prius et posterius*).



The issue was considerably complicated by the influence of John Duns
Scotus. In his early logical commentaries, Scotus had argued that it
was impossible to have two concepts that were related in a prior and
posterior way, just as it was impossible to have a single concept that
captured such a relationship. As a result, 'being' was a
chance equivocal, and metaphor, which was a matter of linguistic
usage, replaced semantic analogy. However, Scotus did believe in
metaphysical analogy, whereby God and creatures, substances and
accidents were related in a prior and posterior way, and in his later
theological works he argued that without a unified concept of being
neither metaphysics nor theology would be possible. Accordingly, he
replaced the claim that 'being' was a chance equivocal
with the claim that it was univocal. In order to support this claim,
he rejected the common doctrine that for a term to be univocal it had
to be a strictly categorial term, picking out some natural kind or
other. He argued that it was sufficient for univocity that
contradiction would arise when the term was affirmed and denied of the
same thing. He then argued that 'being' (*ens*) was
a univocal term subordinated to a single univocal concept.



What one should make of the relationship between the single
univocal concept of being and the being common to finite and infinite
being (as substance and accidents) has proved to be a dividing point
for the Scotist tradition. Dumont has described how even the earliest
followers of Duns Scotus struggled to bring together the seemingly
competing claims of Scotus himself that, on the one hand, (a) there is
one univocal concept of being that is common to God and creatures,
and, on the other hand, (b) God and creatures are entirely
diverse realities with no real commonality. Different Scotists have
emphasized one point or the other, with some Scotists taking the
position that there is a real community in being between God and
creatures in order to preserve the unity of the univocal concept of
being, and other Scotists taking the position that the univocal
concept of being is purely logical in order to preserve the real
diversity between God and creatures. In developing these positions,
Scotists distinguish between different orders or kinds of univocity
and analogy, including between logical and metaphysical univocity and
logical and metaphysical analogy. In the seventeenth century, the great
Scotist philosopher Bartolmaeus Mastrius proposed that, in reality,
being is analogous to God and creatures, but analogy is not a medium
between equivocation and univocation. Instead, every analogy reduces
logically to equivocation or to univocation. In the case of being as
common to God and creatures, the analogy reduces to univocation. In
recent scholarship, Cross has defended a similar interpretation of
Scotus's doctrine, affirming that the semantics of analogy reduce to
or depend upon a more fundamental core of univocity.  



Even for those within the Thomistic tradition, Scotus' arguments
about the univocity of 'being' had to be taken seriously.
On the one hand, the word does not seem to be straightforwardly
equivocal, in the sense of being subordinated to more than one
concept, for we at least have the illusion of being able to grasp
'being' as a general term. As Scotus pointed out, in an
argument reproduced by all who considered the issue (dubbed "the
famous argument from a certain and a doubtful concept" by the early
Scotist Peter Thomae), we can grasp that something is a being while
doubting whether it is a substance or an accident, and this surely
involves having a relatively simple concept of being at our disposal.
On the other hand, there does not seem to be any common nature
involved, and in the absence of a common nature, Thomists thought that
to call the term 'univocal' was inappropriate. What was
needed was a way of allowing the concept to enjoy some kind of unity,
while allowing the word to have a significate that was not a simple
common nature. For many thinkers from the early fourteenth century
onward, the distinction between formal and objective concepts provided
the answer.



The formal concept was the act of mind or conception that represented
an object, and the objective concept was the object represented. A
formal concept is a sign or signifier, and an objective concept is
what is signified. If the spoken word 'being'
corresponds to just one formal concept (a point on which there were
some differences of opinion), the focus of discussion shifts to the
status of the objective concept. Is it the actual thing in the world
which is thought about; is it a common nature or some other kind of
intermediary entity which is distinct from the external object without
being mind-dependent; or is it a special kind of mind-dependent object
which has only objective being, the being of being thought (*esse
objective, esse cognitum*)? In the case of 'being',
since we are clearly not talking about either an individual thing or a
common nature, we get back to the original set of questions about
analogical concepts, now posed at a different level. That is, are we
talking about a special ordering intrinsic to a single objective
concept, or are we talking about an ordered sequence of objective
concepts which corresponds to the one formal concept?


## 8. Cardinal Cajetan: A New Approach



Thomists' discussions of analogy from the beginning of the fourteenth
century onward are dominated by controversy with the arguments of
Scotus and the Scotists. Beginning with the fifteenth-century Thomist John
Capreolus and culminating with the fifteenth-sixteenth century Thomist Thomas de
vio Cajetan, a set of influential Thomists turned to the threefold
division of analogy in Thomas Aquinas's commentary on
the *Sentences*as providing the key for resolving a
set of questions inspired by Scotus about (a) the number
of *rationes*, *intentiones*, or concepts
involved in analogy, (b) the distinction between logical and
metaphysical univocity and analogy, and (c) how analogy is compatible
with valid syllogistic demonstration. The approach of these Thomists
marks a departure from earlier Thomists, such as Hervaeus Natalis, and
arguably a departure from the later works of Thomas Aquinas himself
(such as the *Summa Contra Gentiles*, *De Potentia*, and
*Summa Theologiae*). Montagnes and Wippel have argued strongly
that these fifteenth-sixteenth century Thomists depart from the mature position
of Aquinas. Hochschild has argued to the contrary. McInerny argued
that Cajetan not only misses the mark on the mature thought of
Aquinas, but even misinterprets Aquinas's early commentary on the
*Sentences*. Dewan has contended that McInerny's criticism
of Cajetan relies both on overlooking direct statements by
Aquinas in the commentary on the *Sentences*passage
in question and on omissions of words and phrases from the passage
that support Cajetan's interpretation.



The commentary on the *Sentences*passage in question
divides analogy into: (1) the analogous according
to *intentio*("*intentio*" is a synonym
for *ratio*or concept), but not according
to *esse* (act of being); (2) the analogous according
to *esse*, but not according to *intentio*;
and (3) the analogous both according
to *intentio*and according to *esse*.
Aquinas offers healthy as belonging to an animal, to urine, and to
medicine as an example of the first kind of analogy; body as belonging
to corruptible and incorruptible bodies as an example of the second
kind of analogy -- which Aquinas says is not a case of analogy from the
perspective of logic but is analogy from the perspective of
metaphysics and physics; and, finally, being, truth, and goodness as
examples of the third kind of analogy. Capreolus and Cajetan affirm
that the first kind of analogy (analogy of attribution) requires more
than one *ratio*or concept -- e.g., one for the
healthiness of an animal; another for the healthiness of urine;
another for the healthiness of medicine; etc. They maintain that this
diversity of *rationes* prevents a name that is being said
by analogy in this way from appearing in a valid syllogistic
demonstration. By contrast, names said by analogy in the second way
have only one *ratio* and present no obstacle to
demonstrative reasoning. Indeed, names said by analogy in the second
way are not even considered analogous but univocal from the
perspective of logic, which considers
the *ratio*apart from
its *esse* rather
than the *ratio*together with
its *esse*. Names said by analogy in the third way have
one *ratio*in a qualified sense of unity. As Cajetan
explains it, strictly speaking the different analogates have
diverse *rationes*, but, inasmuch as the diverse
analogates in the third mode of analogy are proportionally similar to
one another, it follows that the *ratio*of one
isproportionally one and the same as
the *ratio*of the other. Cajetan draws the further
inference that valid demonstration can proceed on the basis of this
kind of analogy provided that what is demonstrated from one analogate
about another is demonstrated about the other only insofar as the
analogates are proportionally similar. Accordingly, Cajetan claims
that names said by analogy in the third way (which Cajetan calls
analogy of proper proportionality) meet John Duns Scotus's conditions
for univocity: they have sufficient unity to ground a contradiction
and to serve as a middle term in a syllogism without the fallacy of
equivocation. 



The marriage that Capreolus makes implicitly and that Cajetan makes
explicitly between the third mode of analogy in
Aquinas's commentary on the *Sentences*and analogy
of proportionality in Aquinas's *De Veritate* plays a
key role in their approach to defending analogy against Scotist
objections, and it is one of several points on which modern
scholarship has taken Cajetan in particular to task as an interpreter
of the thought of Thomas Aquinas. Cajetan is frequently criticised in
modern scholarship for his claim that analogy of proportionality
is the only mode of analogy that is analogy in the strict sense
(*proprie*) and the other modes of analogy are only analogy in
a looser sense (*abusive*). This claim is not original to
Cajetan, and can be found in the writings of the late thirteenth to early
fourteenth century Thomist, Thomas Sutton. Cajetan's contemporary
Thomist critics, such as Francis Sylvester of Ferrara and Sylvester
Mazzolini Prierias dispute Cajetan's interpretation of analogy of
proper proportionality and its relationship to other modes of analogy.
Francis Sylvester goes so far as to propose that analogy of
proportionality is a subdivision of a subdivision of analogy of
attribution. Tavuzzi has called attention to several other ways that
Cajetan's contemporary Thomists divided up the modes of analogy in
opposition to Cajetan's threefold division.  



Whatever the merits of the writings of Capreolus and Cajetan on
analogy are for their insight into the position of Thomas Aquinas,
their writings and the writings of their Thomist and Scotist critics
offer great insight into the ongoing philosophical reflection of the
medieval Aristotelian tradition in the logic, metaphysics, and
epistemology of analogy.