Antropometría: las dimensiones humanas en los espacios interiores

Having sketched my idea of Thomas’s view of the difference between the logician and the metaphysician, and presented the key text for our present purpose, I come to how McInerny reads Sent. 1.19. His argument for its interpretation focuses on the second mode, which he holds is not

meant as a sort of analogy of names at all. He even regards it as showing that

the distinctions the reply mentions as between the fi rst and third modes are incidental to analogy as such.

At p. 11, McInerny thinks he has shown that there is something wrong with Cajetan’s division of analogy into types, based as it is on the text of 1.19. But, posing an objection to his own procedure, he asks whether Ca- jetan is not justifi ed in using in the way he does a text which begins with the words:

...something is said according to analogy in three ways...

He then gives us his own reduction of Thomas’s reply to its essential mes- sage:

The response to the objection comes down to this. The feature secundum esse of things named healthy analogously is per accidens to their being named analogously. Other things named analogously have a different feature secundum esse. If some analogous names have feature X and other analogous names do not, feature X is accidental to their being analogous names. To underscore this point, Thomas notes that you can fi nd the same variation secundum esse in univocal terms. [p. 11]

The last sentence refers to the second mode passage, held by McInerny to be about “univocal terms”!

This is a remarkable rewrite of the answer to an objection. In doctrine, I might suggest, it apes such a text as ST 1.26.1.ad 3, on whether God has beatitude. The objector there argues that beatitude is the prize for virtue, and that neither merit nor prize befi ts a God. Thomas answers:

...to be the prize for virtue happens to beatitude or felicity inasmuch as some- one acquires beatitude; just as to be the terminus of generation happens to a being inasmuch as [the being] issues forth from potency into act. Hence, just as God has being, though he is not generated, so also he has beatitude, though it is not merited.

That is, Thomas knows how to make this sort of argument. One should wonder, say I, why he did not simply make it where McInerny wants to read it.29

McInerny wants us to reduce analogy to the issue of “secundum intentio-

nem.” Thus, he says:

There can be inequality, a relation per prius et posterius, both secundum intentionem and secundum esse. The former is what is in play when we talk of a term being used analogously. [p. 12, my small caps]

Now, of course, this is true for McInerny, the logician. Thomas Aquinas’s

explicit point is that this is not true for the metaphysician or the natural

philosopher. They say that the issue of “secundum esse” difference regard- ing a term such as “body” makes this an analogous term.

If we take the presentation of his argument from the beginning, I re- gret to note that what we fi rst see, on p. 6, is that McInerny, aiming to quote the crucial text of Thomas, inadvertently leaves out the key passage

in the middle case concerning the metaphysician and the physicist. (For clarity

on this, in quoting the passage earlier, I used italics to show the exact passage.) This is alarming, since so much of McInerny’s argument dis- courages the reader from seeing such things as univocity and analogy as having a peculiarly metaphysical interest. They are the proper preserve of the logician, he tells us.—Still, this is just a very bad typographical er- ror (one, nevertheless, which carries over from the Latin to the English translation, given in the footnote!).

When he goes on to discuss what Cajetan has done with the text, Mc- Inerny provides his own analysis. He claims that the logician in the text is the dialectician, not the logician in the sense of the thinker who gives a

29. This point of McInerny’s, that the distinctions in Sent. 1.19 are per accidens as re- gards analogy of names, runs through his whole book. Thus, after telling us (erroneously) that Thomas does not use the terminology of “analogy of being,” he says that, if he had, he would have made it clear that whether or not there is the same order in the things named, as regards their being, as there is in the names used about the things, is per accidens, having nothing intrinsically to do with the analogy of names or the analogy of being. [p. 162]

defi nition of “genus” and “named univocally” and “named analogically.” [p. 8] This in itself is not clear to me. The basis for the discussed differ- ence concerning “body” is the doctrine that the genus is a name for a thing taken from the side of the matter. The reason why “body” is dif- ferent from a genus such as “animal” is that the things called “animals,” though they have natures which are ordered according to more perfect and less perfect, nevertheless have at bottom the same sort of matter: the genus has a foundation in reality which is one. In the case of “body,” the matter of the corruptible is of a different order than that of the incor- ruptible. Hence, the genus “body” is called “logical,” in the sense that it does not have the sort of foundation in reality that genera of generable and corruptible things have.—All of that sort of theory seems to me to pertain to the metaphysician (and the physicist), not to any logician. It has to do with that conception of the logical notion which includes the notion’s foundation in reality. That is, it has to do with the full defi nition of those logical notions, not the sort of defi nition of them which satisfi es the logician.30

I notice also that McInerny tells his reader that the metaphysician, faced with the “dialectician” calling “body” univocal, calls it “equivocal.” [p. 9] He seems not to want to let the reader face the fact that Thomas has said that this middle item is a case of something being “said accord- ing to analogy”!

McInerny actually uses the (in this aspect, regrettable) doctrine of Ca- jetan, that the middle case is true of any genus, even e.g. “animal,” in or- der to argue that Thomas is not really teaching us about types of analogy at all in the text.31 _{We read:}

30. On this, cf. CM 10.12 (2137 [2]; and 2138–2142; and 2145). In 2142 we read: ......But no matter what genus be taken, it is necessary that corruptible and incorrupt- ible be [intrinsic] to its notion. Hence, it is impossible that they communicate in any genus. And it is reasonable that this happen. For there cannot be one matter of cor- ruptibles and incorruptibles. But the genus, physically speaking, is taken from matter. Hence, it was said above that those things which do not have matter in common are generically diverse. But, logically speaking, nothing prevents their agreeing in genus, in- asmuch as they agree in one common notion [in una communi ratione] whether of sub- stance or of quality or of something of that sort.

Obviously, it is the word “genus” which is differently defined by the physicist and by the logi- cian. Hence arise two different “ways of speaking.” And we can expect the same thing with the word “analogy.”

31. Cf. Thomas de Vio Cajetan, De nominum analogia, c. 1, in De l’analogie et Du concept

d’être, ed. Hyacinthe-Marie Robillard, O.P., Montréal, 1963: Les presses de l’Université de

Montréal, para. 15 (corresponds to para. 5 in the edition of Zammit and Hering): “Omne enim genus, analogum hoc modo appelari potest......” McInerny refers to this text on p. 9, n. 4. Cf. Armand Maurer, “The Analogy of Genus,” The New Scholasticism 29 (1955), pp. 127–144, who notes that “[of late] the consensus of opinion.......is that the analogy of ge- nus is not in the long run a true metaphysical analogy.” [p. 127] Fr. Maurer does not, him- self, join this consensus. One should note, nevertheless, that his expression “analogy of genus” is itself somewhat Cajetanian by suggestion.

...the second member of Thomas’s division of things said according to anal- ogy makes it clear that inequality secundum esse is irrelevant to what is meant by an analogous name, just as inequality secundum esse is irrelevant to the univocal character of generic terms. In short, Thomas is noting that there are inequalities, orderings per prius et posterius, among things talked about that do [10] not affect our way of talking about them... [9–10]

This is not true. The second member is a member of a group, each of which is a case of things said according to analogy. In that second mem- ber, though the logician sees only univocity, the metaphysician, Thomas is telling us, sees analogy in the names. This is because his mode of con- sideration of things is different from that of the logician. The metaphysi- cian incorporates into the meaning of the name of the thing differences in the mode of being of the things given the common name. For him, “body” has two different meanings, as used of the natures of corruptible and incorruptible substances. A genus such as “animal,” pace Cajetan and McInerny, is quite a different case.

Unless one thinks that Thomas is criticizing the metaphysician here, accusing him of a mistake (obviously this is not so), this is what is being said.

But we must not miss how far McInerny is willing to go in defense of his thesis. On p. 13, still attempting to explain to us the threefold anal- ogy text in the Sentences, he tells us:

Why, then, does Thomas introduce these three accidental conjunctions with the remark that something is said according to analogy in three ways? It is already clear that he cannot be taken to mean that there are three kinds of analogous name. When analogy is used to speak of a kind of naming, there is an inequal- ity, an order per prius et posterius, among the intentions it signifi es. Thus, when there is inequality secundum esse, the term “analogy” can be used to refer to it. Then we can say that talk of inequality can conjure up three different states of af- fairs (aliquid dicitur secundum analogiam tripliciter). Sometimes (1) there is inequal- ity of meaning (and thus an analogous name), but the denominating quality is not multiplied in the things named so that it exists in them equally or unequally. Sometimes (2) there is inequality among things named univocally. We might put this as “proper inequality,” or “specifi c inequality,” or “inaequalitas secundum ratio-

nes proprias.” Finally, sometimes (3) there is a conjunction of order and inequality

among a plurality of notions of a common term and unequal, more or less per- fect, existence of the denominating quality in the things talked about. [p. 13]

If this is to be read as an answer to the question with which it begins, we must think that Thomas really meant to speak of three ways in which

inequality is found (thus, McInerny’s remarkable rewrite: “....talk of in-

equality can conjure up three different states of affairs” [!]). McInerny, in

Thomas should have supplied us with: “inaequalitas secundum rationes pro-

prias”! But Thomas Aquinas did not say that. He said “analogy,” and even

“something is said according to analogy...”

To accept the “explanation” of McInerny, we must understand the middle item, the (2), as using “analogy” in a different sense: not about

naming, but about inequality in the being of the things named. But this is

an explanation which fl ies in the face of the text. The text does not say that the thing is spoken of univocally, but that what is being spoken of does not have the equality which the univocal way of naming (all that is seen by the logician) might lead one to believe it had. It says:

...for the metaphysician and the physicist, who consider things according to their being, neither this word [nomen] “body,” nor anything else [i.e. any other name or word], is said univocally of corruptibles and incorruptibles...

Clearly, we are speaking about how people understand words. The logicus understands them in one way and the metaphysician and physicist in an- other.—This is quite against the McInerny reading.

Coming back to McInerny’s argument to show that the threefold divi- sion in Sent. 1.19 is not a division of kinds of analogy, I would say that if we grant him his conception of defi ning the genus, the species, analogy, etc., then what he says will follow. But we should not do so. The very text of 1.19, in the part on the middle mode, tells us that one thinker has a different conception of “univocity” than the other has: they agree that there is only one intentio, but they differ as regards the importance of the difference in the case. It is not enough, according to the metaphysician, to have one intentio for univocity. One must have the same kind of mat- ter.32_{—Or, if one will, we can say that the two do not speak one language}

as regards what is “one notion.” But the reason they do not is that they

32. McInerny says:

The question must arise as to whether the logicus of the present text has a different conception of univocal or equivocal terms from the philosopher. Surely they agree on what such terms mean but disagree as to whether the things being talked about can provide a ratio communis which is found equally in them.

I say: no, they speak different languages; hence, the need to qualify the word “genus” with the mode of consideration being used. For example, in ST 1.66.2.ad 2 we read:

......si genus consideretur physice, “corruptibilia et incorruptibilia non sunt in eodem genere,” propter diversum modum potentiae in eis, ut dicitur 10 Metaph. Secundum autem logicam considerationem, est unum genus omnium corporum, propter unam rationem corporeitatis..[......if the genus is considered physically, “corruptibles and in- corruptibles are not in the same genus,” because of the diverse mode of potency in them, as is said in Metaph. 10. However, according to logical consideration there is one genus of all bodies, because of the one notion of corporeity.]

And cf. ST 1.88.2.ad 4.

have no agreement, either, on what “notion” means. “Being based on the matter” pertains to the notion of a genus, according to the metaphysician, but this is not in the “notion” of the genus, according to the logician. The net result is that the logician never has the last word, not even on “genus” or “univocity” or “analogy of names.”33

Conclusion

Let us consider one last time the objection to which Thomas is reply- ing. The objector wanted to locate truth in God alone, all other things being called “true” relative to God. His middle term was that it had al- ready been established that “true” is said analogically concerning those things in which there is truth. This led him to introduce the model of “healthy” and to conclude that truth is in God alone. Obviously Thomas could have answered that in some cases of things said analogously what the objector says applies, but other cases exist in which what is said anal- ogously is found in all the things spoken of, though according to more and less. Had he deigned to explain why this difference exists, he could have spoken of modes of causality.34 _{If he were McInerny, he would have}

gone on to say that whether or not the nature is found in all the things said by analogy is per accidens to analogy as such. Why did he rather give what has all the appearance of wanting to be a taxonomy of analogy of names?

Why does Thomas answer the way he does? What is the lesson being taught by the answer? It is a little system, certainly mnemonically helpful, in terms of intentio and esse. It bears upon analogy, because that was the point of the objection, the objector’s middle term. And it bears upon cas- es of analogy precisely as regards having a multiplication of the quality in being,

or not. It is an argument that it is only in one sort of analogy that one

does not have the quality distributed in the many things.

Are these cases merely per accidens as regards analogy? No. It is the metaphysician who defi nes analogy, and does so in terms of the founda-

tions in reality for the modes of discourse. Thus, for example, we read in

Thomas’s paraphrase of Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics:

Thus, therefore, he says that “good” is said of many things, not in function of meanings altogether different, as happens in those which are equivocals by

33. I note that CP 7.7 (ed. Maggiòlo, 936 [9]) contrasts the “abstract consideration of the logician or the mathematician” with the “concrete conception of the physicist making applications to matter” [concretam rationem naturalis ad materiam applicantis] (a text referred to by Maurer, “The Analogy of Genus,” n. 16).

chance, but inasmuch as all goods depend on one fi rst source of goodness or in- asmuch as they are ordered to one end. For Aristotle did not think that that sepa- rate good is the idea and ratio of all goods, but the source and end.

Or else they are all called “good” according to analogy, that is, the same pro- portion, as sight is the good of the body and intellect is the good of the soul.

He prefers this third mode for this reason, because it is taken in function of goodness inhering in things, whereas the fi rst two modes [were taken] in func- tion of a separate goodness, on the basis of which something is not named so prop-

erly.35

We see here the interest of the metaphysician in the real foundation for naming: naming is more truly naming when the foundation in reality is

fuller.

It is “dialectical” or “logical” to reduce analogy to the issue of intentio alone. This McInerny has done, but only by misreading the text. Thom- as, in the passage on threefold analogy is not, in the middle item, mere- ly interested in teaching us the difference between the logician and the philosopher. He is interested in grading analogies from the viewpoint of being. McInerny, looking at the whole thing from the viewpoint of the logician, does not see any point in looking at the analogy of names from the view- point of being. But that is to be expected. The metaphysician conceives of different modes of analogy as based on the sort of real foundation the log-