Medieval theories of analogy: a response to problems in three areas: 

logic, theology, and metaphysics

[From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy]

Medieval theories of analogy were a response to problems in three areas: logic, theology, and metaphysics. Logicians were concerned with the use of words having more than one sense, whether completely different, or related in some way. Theologians were concerned with language about God. How can we speak about a transcendent, totally simple spiritual being without altering the sense of the words we use? Metaphysicians were concerned with talk about reality. How can we say that both substances (e.g., Socrates) and accidents (e.g., the beardedness of Socrates) exist when one is dependent on the other; how can we say that both God and creatures exist, when one is created by the other? Medieval thinkers reacted to these three problems by developing a theory which divided words into three sorts, independently of context. Some were univocal (always used with the same sense), some were purely equivocal (used with quite different senses), and some were analogical (used with related senses). Analogical terms were thought to be particularly useful in metaphysics and theology, but they were routinely discussed in commentaries on Aristotle’s logic and in logic textbooks. The background to the discussion was given by what is often called the analogy of being or metaphysical analogy, the doctrine that reality is divided both horizontally into the very different realities of substances and accidents and vertically into the very different realities of God and creatures, and that these realities are analogically related. Nonetheless, the phrase “medieval theories of analogy” as used here will refer to semantic analogy, a set of linguistic and logical doctrines supplemented, at least from the fourteenth century on, by doctrines about the nature of human concepts.

There were three main types of semantic analogy, each based on a type of metaphysical analogy. In the original Greek sense, analogy involved a comparison of two proportions or relations. Thus ‘principle’ was said to be an analogical term when said of a point and a spring of water because a point is related to a line as a spring is related to a river. This type of analogy came to be called the analogy of proportionality. In the second sense, analogy involved a relation between two things, of which one is primary and the other secondary. Thus ‘healthy’ was said to be an analogical term when said of a dog and its food because while the dog has health in the primary sense, its food is healthy only secondarily as contributing to or causing the health of the dog. This second type of analogy became known as the analogy of attribution, and its special mark was being said in a prior and a posterior sense (per prius et posterius). A third type of analogy, sometimes used by theologians, appealed to a relation of likeness between God and creatures. Creatures are called good or just because their goodness or justice imitates or reflects the goodness or justice of God. This type of analogy was called the analogy of imitation or participation. Of the three types, it is the analogy of attribution that is central to medieval discussions.

From the fourteenth century on discussions of analogy focused not so much on linguistic usages as on the nature of the concepts that corresponded to the words used. Is there just one concept that corresponds to an analogical term, or is there a sequence of concepts? If the latter, how are the members of the sequence ordered and related to each other? Moreover, how far should we distinguish between so-called formal concepts (or acts of mind) and objective concepts (whatever it is that is the object of the act of understanding)? These discussions were still influential at the time of Descartes.

• 1. Medieval Theories of Language

• 2. Problems in Logic, Theology, and Metaphysics

• 3. History of the Word ‘Analogy’

• 4. Divisions of Equivocation

• 5. Divisions of Analogy

• 6. Thomas Aquinas

• 7. John Duns Scotus and the Role of Concepts

• 8. Cardinal Cajetan: A New Approach

• Bibliography

• Academic Tools

• Other Internet Resources

• Related Entries

History of the Word ‘Analogy’

[From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy]

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 ‘αναλογια’, 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.