Note: The Thomist Tradition and the Problems of Analogy

Introduction

This note considers aspects of the Thomist tradition’s engagement with the problems of analogy (devoting specific attention to Thomas de Vio Cajetan [†1534]). I say problems (plural) because there is a fundamental threefold plurality of issues that intersect in the development of Thomistic analogical doctrine throughout the centuries after Thomas Aquinas (†1274). Although Aquinas identified the philosophical principles that informed the reflection of the Thomists who followed him, the controversy surrounding analogy transcends Aquinas as a philosophical-theological figure and source. Various factors contributed to the transition from “Thomasian” sketches of analogy to a “Thomistic” doctrine of analogy.¹

I suggest that the formal complexity of the subject, the textual insufficiency of Aquinas’s writings, and the disciplinary conundrum famously posed by John Duns Scotus (†1308) collectively inspired the Thomist tradition's contributions to analogy theory.

I. The Formal Problem: Being, Knowledge, and Predication

The formal problem of analogy emerges from a philosophical question in a theological context: How is it possible for creatures to say true things about God?² Although simple, this question touches on an integration of elements that, even singly, are quite complex and that jointly have vexed the minds of the ablest philosophers and theologians. The first element is ontological: The existence of God and the existence of creatures are essentially different. God is infinite. Creatures are finite. Therefore, their respective beings are more unlike than they are similar. The disparity between the being of God and the being of creatures is not merely one of degree but one of kind.³

The second element is epistemological: Unlike God (who fully, immediately, and actually knows all of reality through his own essence) human persons come to knowledge through a complex cognitive process that always begins with—and always proceeds in reference to—the creaturely experience of contingent things existing outside of the human person.⁴ The creature’s finite existence renders the creature’s understanding of things, likewise, finite. Contingent knowledge reflects the limits of created being.⁵

The third element is predicational: Through the human intellect’s conformity to an object of knowledge, the intellect receives a conceptual likeness (i.e., a “concept”) of the known being, which can then be expressed through a name (i.e., a sign of the concept). Hence, a thing is able to be named insofar as it is understood.⁶ Meaning is imposed on a name when the name is employed to signify an understood object. And these meaning-ful names participate in the formulation of propositions. A proposition (i.e., a declarative sentence) comprises the judgmental act of uniting a predicate to a subject—attributing the former to the latter. Predication, at root, refers to the act of saying something about something else.⁷ Every proposition proceeds from an act of rational judgment about actual, existing reality. And every proposition is either true or false in relation to beings as they actually are.⁸

I-A. God and Simple Univocation

Aquinas observes that this dynamic of being, knowledge, and predication encounters unique challenges with regard to God. The human ability to formulate meaningful and true propositions about the being of God—to predicate “names” about God—suffers limitation because “his essence is above that which we understand about God and signify by vocalized words.”⁹ Indeed, even though God “can be named by us from creatures” (because he is the principle of created reality), it is not the case “that the name signifying him would express the divine essence as it is.”¹⁰ Every name that creatures predicate of God fails to signify comprehensively the infinite being of God. We can predicate “wisdom” of Socrates in a way that we cannot predicate “wisdom” of God. The human conception of sagacity—existing in the mind of the knower and signified by the word “wisdom”—does not comprehend the being of God in the way that it might comprehend the sagacity of the wise-man Socrates. “Wisdom” predicated of God does not signify, in reality, “something distinct from his essence or power or existence.” Thus, the term “leaves the reality [of God] signified as incomprehended [incomprehensam] and exceeding the signification of the name.”¹¹

On the other hand, “wisdom” as predicated of a man is a perfection that is really distinct from the creature’s essence, power, and existence. The term, “in a certain sense [quodammodo], circumscribes and comprehends the thing signified.”¹² “Hence,” Aquinas concludes, “no name is predicated univocally of God and of creatures,” because no single concept adequately represents both God and creatures.¹³ In light of this rejection of univocal predication, Aquinas observes that the philosopher can consider two other predicational candidates.

I-B. God and Pure Equivocation

First, given the limitations of contingent knowledge and expression, perhaps it is not possible for humans to name God with any degree of real correspondence. This position represents one of pure equivocation: no one name can accurately express both human and divine being—a single name will always signify essentially different things intentionally represented by essentially different concepts. Thus, according to pure equivocation, predicating “wisdom” of Socrates and “wisdom” of God is as diverse in meaning as predicating “table” of a piece of furniture and “table” of a chart of chemistry.

Metaphysical and epistemological reasons both inveigh against pure equivocation. “Unless there is some agreement [convenientia] of creatures to God according to reality [secundum rem], his essence would not be the likeness [similitudo] of creatures, and so by knowing his essence he would not know creatures.”¹⁴ If there were no real ontological similitude between God and creatures, then God’s own knowledge of creatures would be impossible—since God knows all things through his own essence.¹⁵ “Similarly,” from the side of creatures, “neither would we be able to attain knowledge of God from created things.”¹⁶ The reason for this lies in the nature of equivocation itself. In equivocal predication, it does not matter which name is used because there is no real “agreement” between a name and a thing. The absence of real agreement prevents human knowledge from cognitively grasping the reality of God through any reasoning process that begins with created reality and employs names associated with created reality.

We observe that Aquinas explicitly invokes the relation between being and knowledge—both considered from the side of God as well as considered from the side of rational creatures. Equivocal predication entails an insurmountable division between God and created reality in the metaphysical order and in the epistemological order. Finally, in the light of faith, Aquinas argues that Romans 1:20 categorically excludes a purely equivocal account of divine predication.¹⁷

I-C. God and Analogical Predication

Second, perhaps it is possible for humans to name God with some degree of truthful accuracy (contrary to equivocity) but without exhaustive comprehensivity (contrary to univocity). Aquinas explains that analogy represents a mode of predication situated between “pure equivocation” (puram aequivocationem) and “simple univocation” (simplicem univocationem).¹⁸ He endorses analogical predication because it respects the essential difference between infinite being and created being, as well as the limited—yet real—cognitive ability of creatures to know and to express truths about God.

In sum, Aquinas addresses the formal problem of being, knowledge, and predication. He concludes that neither simple univocation nor pure equivocation meet the metaphysical and epistemological requirements of divine predication. Analogy, thus, receives Aquinas’s approval—and it would consistently receive his approbation throughout his writings.¹⁹ Interestingly, “the claim that human language of God is univocal was itself a common position in the twelfth century and was even called the common opinion at that time.”²⁰ When considered in relation to Aquinas’s philosophical predecessors, one could argue that he was rather innovative in his answer to the problem of being, knowledge, and predication.²¹

II. The Textual Problem: “Applied Analogy” in the Corpus Thomisticum

The word “analogia” (in its various forms) appears over 250 times in Aquinas’s writings. The exact contours of his doctrine of analogy, however, elude easy identification (much less systematic articulation). Several textual reasons account for this difficulty. First, Aquinas did not produce an independent and formally complete consideration of analogy.²² “His discussions of the analogy of names are always within some other context and for the sake of some other discussion.”²³ Consequently, the numerous appearances of analogy in the corpus Thomisticum are always instances of applied analogy, so to speak. Thomists are thus obliged to reconstruct a theory of analogy from Aquinas’s application of analogy. Second, in comparisons of the passages where Aquinas does explicitly reference analogy, puzzling discrepancies suggest (at best) development or (at worst) inconsistency in his thought.²⁴

Aquinas is consistently attentive to the dynamics of being and of knowledge. He always concludes that analogy (rather than univocation or equivocation) accounts for the unique dynamic of being and knowledge in the context of divine predication. Nonetheless, individual passages where he invokes analogy elude, at times, immediate comprehension. Collectively considered, some passages make statements (or fail to make statements) that are difficult to reconcile with what Aquinas says (or does not say) in other texts. Variations abound. Some of the differences, of course, can be ascribed to particular emphases occasioned by the diverse contexts in which Aquinas invokes analogy. The fact remains, however: it is not always easy to identify the points of essential continuity that lie behind the textual variances. Harmonizing Aquinas’s expositions of analogy proves a formidable task.

Some studies of Aquinas’s analogy doctrine doubt whether it is even possible to reconstruct a fully consistent presentation of analogy from his corpus taken as a whole.²⁵ Admittedly, the doctrine of analogy presented by early-Aquinas (e.g., the De Veritate q. 2, a. 11) does seem to differ from that affirmed by the mature-Aquinas (e.g., the Summa Theologiae I, q. 13, a. 5). And, if irreconcilable differences do actually characterize different texts, a further question emerges: which presentation of analogy does one follow?

The Thomists who succeeded Aquinas had to face this textual problem in addition to the problem divine predication formally poses. These are not the only two problems, however. An additional problem—an objection with regard to analogy’s logical vulnerabilities—also left its imprint on the Thomist tradition. It is to this disciplinary problem that I now turn.

III. The Disciplinary Problem: Scotus’s Critique and the Fallacy of Equivocation

Aquinas, perhaps, thinks that “the notion of analogy does not require much theoretical elaboration.”²⁶ John Duns Scotus, certainly, is of a different opinion. Scotus has received the opprobrium of many—particularly for his rejection of analogy in favor of univocity.²⁷ Nonetheless, his exact doctrine of univocity has been greatly misunderstood and remains subject to varying interpretations.²⁸ In terms of historical context, the Scotistic critique of analogy doctrine was probably leveled more directly against that of Henry of Ghent (†1293) than that of Thomas Aquinas.²⁹ Indeed, there are points of commonality between Thomas and Scotus. Both embrace a fundamental Aristotelianism. Scotus also addresses the question of analogy within the context of theological discussion.³⁰ Differences between them remain, however.³¹

One of the principal motivations behind Scotus’s analogy-critique is his admirable desire to defend the ability of valid syllogisms to arrive at true knowledge about the real God. Only predications of a univocal sort, Scotus argued, ensure that one can discursively conclude to theological truth. “The masters, treating of God or of those things that are known about God and creatures concede univocation in their teaching… even if they deny it verbally.”³² Richard Cross expresses Scotus’s point in this manner: “the semantic correlate of metaphysical attribution turns out to be univocity.”³³

For the Subtle Doctor, then, univocity—in one form or another—is unavoidable. “Scotus claims that if his own theory is false, then this will be the ruin of theology as a discipline that makes deductive arguments.”³⁴ Hence, the disciplinary problem. And yet it is not easy to categorize Scotus’s doctrine of univocity within the interplay of metaphysics and semantics.³⁵ This is due to the difficulty of the subject matter itself as well as to possible shifts in Scotus’s own thought. Indeed, scholars have even suggested that the opposition to analogy characteristic of the mature Scotus is not attributable to the younger Scotus.³⁶

Common resumés of the Thomist-Scotist polemic often fail to capture the point of essential divergence between these thinkers and their respective schools. “Scotus does not simply deny the analogy of being, any more than he simply affirms its univocity. He lives up to his title of Subtle Doctor by introducing a distinction: Being is univocal for the logician, analogous for the metaphysician”³⁷ Like Aquinas, Scotus identifies a distinction between the logician and the metaphysician in the context of predication (see Aquinas’s In I Sent. d. 19, q. 5, a. 2, ad 1). Unlike Aquinas, Scotus denies that the concept of “being” is fundamentally analogical.

At root, Scotus understands univocity in terms of concepts.³⁸ He defends the necessity of a single name that signifies one concept of being common to all of the ten categories. He attributes two characteristics to conceptual univocity. First, a concept is truly univocal if and only if its unity necessitates a contradiction when it is simultaneously affirmed and denied. Second, a concept is truly univocal if and only if it can serve as the all-important middle term in a valid syllogism (thereby ensuring that the syllogism avoids succumbing to the fallacy of equivocation). Scholars suggest that these two characteristics serve requirements for rather than as exhaustive aspects of authentic conceptual univocity.³⁹ Nonetheless, Scotus does not reject any and all forms of analogical predication. He argues that any legitimate analogical doctrine necessarily presupposes at least some univocal concepts equally applicable to God and to creatures. “The point” of Scotus’s theory “is that we can give an account of analogy only if we accept that some concepts we apply to God and creatures are univocal.”⁴⁰

In other words, Scotus thought that analogical concepts are only truly intelligible if they are first “anchored in univocal concepts.”⁴¹ Indeed, “one might say that Scotus’s univocal concepts are like the first step on Jacob’s ladder towards God, and his analogous concepts are like all the subsequent steps towards God.”⁴²

By contrast, members of the Thomist tradition doubted that univocity represents a real foundation upon which the philosopher and the theologian can erect the ladder of sure ascent to God in the speculative disciplines. It is to their engagement with the problems of analogy that we now turn.

IV. The Thomists and the Problems of Analogy

The Thomist tradition appreciated the problems of analogy: the formal problem situated in the speculative order absolutely considered, the textual problem latent in the literary corpus of Thomas Aquinas, and the disciplinary problem articulated by Duns Scotus. With regard to the complications involved in the dynamics of being, knowledge, and predication, all of the Thomists concur with Aquinas: univocal and equivocal meta-structures are to be rejected for reasons ontological and epistemological. The Thomists all agree that analogy is the solution to the formal problem of predication. And yet “the writings of Scotus forced Aquinas’s disciples to search their master’s texts for answers to questions he was not considering.”⁴³ Each of the Thomists, in light of the disciplinary problem, attempts to reconstruct an analogical “mechanism” from both the principles integral to the formal problem of predication as well as Aquinas’s texts on analogy. Yet these reconstructions assume nuanced configurations, and this for numerous reasons. Aquinas’s silence about “the ‘concept’ of being as something with a distinctive logical unity” represents “a fundamental obscurity in Aquinas’s thought about being.”⁴⁴ And it is here that much of the work of Thomistic reconstruction takes place. Still, in those texts where Aquinas does refer to analogy, one finds seemingly inconsistent (or, at least, non-identical) expositions. Aquinas’s textual variances contribute to the refraction of the Thomist tradition’s united rejection of univocity and equivocity into particularized accounts of analogy.⁴⁵

Therefore, we might summarize the tradition’s common project in this manner: The Scotistic critique compelled the Thomists to revisit the formal problem of being, knowledge, and predication in light of the texts of Aquinas on analogy. The formal problem, thus, serves as the primary context for their discourse. The Thomists’s fidelity to Thomas’s thought is founded upon their meta-commitment to the truth. This is why the Thomists do not consider innovations in technical language or theoretical configuration to be fundamental betrayals of Aquinas’s teaching. The Thomists do not regard Aquinas (or his writings) as an end in himself (or in themselves). Rather, they seek to understand the nature of reality (e.g., the formal problem) in light of problems that their teacher did not address (e.g., the disciplinary problem) and with the burden of some unresolved complexities that their teacher, himself, occasioned (e.g., the textual problem).⁴⁶

Considered in light of the textual problem, the Thomists are intent on identifying the essential principles underlying Aquinas’s consistent (if varied) espousal of analogy. Additionally, they wish to exonerate Aquinas from charges of metaphysical and epistemological error as well as from charges of disciplinary compromise in logical argumentation and theological science. Under the aspect of the disciplinary problem, the Thomists labor to show how a robust analogy doctrine not only survives critique but even excels the proposed univocist solution to the formal problem. Otherwise expressed, in the emergence of Thomistic theories of analogy, the textual problem and the disciplinary problem are integrated—as a speculative aid and inspiration—into a renewed consideration of the formal problem.

All of this attests to the fact that the Thomists recognize Scotus’s philosophical formidability. One should not interpret the Thomistic polemic against Scotistic thought as a sign of flippant opprobrium. A fundamental univocism would seem to enjoy an immediate, formal immunity from equivocal fallacy. On the side of semantics and logic, then, Scotus’s position is strongly appealing. Its speculative vulnerability lies in the peculiar ontological and metaphysical implications latent in a univocal conception of being. One such implication is complexity in God: “Anyone committed to a strong account of divine simplicity will have to reject the univocity theory of religious language.”⁴⁷

The strength of Thomistic analogy, by contrast, is its clear preservation of the divine simplicity.⁴⁸ The Thomistic vulnerability, however, lies in the order of logical validity and semantic accuracy. With regard to “crucial issues of philosophical logic,” Aquinas’s disciples “found that more often than not St. Thomas had simply not treated explicitly or even adequately the problems in question—if for no other reason than that they were problems which had emerged, or at least attained their greatest intensity and precise identification and definition, in the years following St. Thomas’ death.”⁴⁹

Although Aquinas’s disciples are convinced that analogy is a superior means for articulating the dynamism of being, thought, and predication, they recognize that their teacher’s doctrine requires further exposition and defense. In order to exonerate Aquinas’s analogy doctrine from the damning danger of the fallacy of equivocation, the Thomists must demonstrate how analogical concepts possess: 1. the principle of real distinction between finite being and infinite being, 2. a unity sufficient to serve as the middle term in valid syllogisms, and 3. a type of unity that distinguishes analogical concepts from univocal concepts.

V. Cajetan on the Problems of Analogy

Numerous philosophers and theologians of the Thomist tradition took up the Scotistic challenge. Thomas de Vio Cajetan ranks foremost among them. This Cajetanian priority is due in no small way to the fact that he composed an independent treatise on the semantics of analogy titled: De Nominum Analogia (DNA).⁵⁰ Nonetheless, on this topic as on others, “Cajetan was not writing in a vacuum.” ⁵¹ He is a central and integrating figure in the Thomist tradition: “Cajetan succeeded in making explicit the connections between different aspects of analogy, implied by earlier Thomists,” even when he does not always agree with his fellow Thomists on every point.⁵²

In his commentary on the Posterior Analytics of Aristotle (bk. II, c. 11), Cajetan signals an awareness of Scotus’s critique of analogy vis-à-vis demonstration. He responds: “Behold, the text of Aristotle expressly saying that analogous middles [analoga media] should sometimes be taken, which although they are not univocals, yet which are following those things and that they were univocal.”⁵³ Cajetan highlights Aristotelian precedent because he wishes to cite a reference appreciated by both Aquinas and Scotus. Both figures and both of their respective schools were profoundly influenced by the Stagirite’s writings. Therefore, on a purely Aristotelian level, analogy should not be immediately jettisoned. This helps provide the Thomists with textual warrant for their defense of analogy outside of Aquinas’s own writings.

In his commentary on Aristotle’s Categories, Cajetan clarifies the nature of the formal problem by distinguishing the analogous (whose meaning is “somewhat diverse”) from the “purely equivocal” (whose “substantive meaning” is “entirely diverse”).⁵⁴ In order to draw out this distinction more clearly, Cajetan examines the nature of univocal unity. He explains that “any sort of diversity in the meanings that correspond to a name is sufficient for equivocation.” Both pure equivocation and analogy would be included within this broad sense of equivocation. In the case of truly univocal unity, however, “not just any identity of meaning corresponding to a name is sufficient.” The precise the nature of univocal unity requires “that the concept of the univocated things, which is brought out by the name in which they are univocated, be entirely the same and include no more and no less in one case than in the other.”⁵⁵ Univocation denotes an exact parity of concepts that excludes any differences either of excess or of defect. In contrast with the nature of pure univocism, Cajetan is content to concede that “analogous things are included under the equivocal” broadly considered.⁵⁶

He also employs a distinction between what philosophers in the 14^th and the 15^th centuries began to refer to as the “formal concept” and the “objective concept.”⁵⁷ This distinction harkens readers back to an earlier Thomist: Hervaeus Natalis (†1323). Natalis distinguishes between the ratio that is “the very concept of the mind” (ipso conceptu mentis) and the ratio as “the thing understood through such a concept” (re intellecta per talem conceptum).⁵⁸ Natalis denies that a single formal concept informs the predication of things created and of things divine.⁵⁹

In the same vein, Cajetan strongly disagrees with those who claim that “those things are called univocal whose concept is the same and equally participated.” Here Cajetan is also in line with Thomas Sutton (†1315) who, like Natalis, maintained that a plurality of concepts characterizes analogical predication.⁶⁰ Cajetan thus demurs from the kind of approach endorsed by John Capreolus (†1444) and Dominic of Flanders (†1479). Capreolus intriguingly suggests that a single ratio is not inimical to analogical predication: he concedes to Scotus a single concept of being common to God and creatures.⁶¹ Capreolus, thus, attempts to recalibrate Thomistic analogy according to the single-ratio demand of univocity. In order to distinguish Thomistic analogy from Scotistic univocity, however, Capreolus locates the distinction between univocity and analogicity in degrees of participation in a single ratio. In the case of univocity, one name is predicated of many things through a single ratio equally participated. In the case of analogy, one name is said of many things unequally participated.⁶²

Cajetan finds such an account of univocity unsatisfying because “it subsumes the truly univocal under the equivocals, which is foreign to the truth of logic.”⁶³ We note the precision with which Cajetan frames the relation of univocation, equivocation, and analogy. Analogy, at least broadly speaking, is a form of equivocation. But the intelligible integrity of univocation should not be compromised by defining univocation by way of remotion from equivocation.

In Cajetan’s metaphysically-dense commentary on the De Ente et Essentia, we find a division of analogy that is reminiscent of Aquinas’s DV q. 2, a. 11.⁶⁴ Cajetan acknowledges that analogy is, itself, analogical (something evident in Aquinas’s own writings).⁶⁵ He explains that “analogates are twofold”: “Certain ones [are analogous] according to a determinate relation of one to another”—like substance and accident, which are related “such that the posterior [accident] according to the analogous name is defined through its prior [substance].” “Certain [others are analogous] according to proportionality.” And this second mode of analogy applies to God and creatures—“for there is an infinity of difference between God and creature” (and “a creature is not defined as being through God”).⁶⁶ Cajetan explains that analogates of the second mode “have the same ratio relatively on account of the identity of proportion, which is found in them.”⁶⁷ He grounds this analogy of proportionality on the intrinsic being and conception proper to each analogate respectively.⁶⁸ This enables him—both ontologically and semantically—to maintain the real difference between essentially diverse analogates. Surprisingly, perhaps, Cajetan thinks that the preservation of this real distinction also serves as the foundation for real analogical unity between analogates.

Amidst some differences, the theoretical versatility that Cajetan recognizes in analogy configured according to proportionality parallels the convictions of Thomists like Sutton, Capreolus, Sylvester Prierias (†1527), Francis Silvestri of Ferrara (†1528), and John of St. Thomas (†1644).⁶⁹ And Cajetan’s convictions about the metaphysical mechanics of analogy carry over from his De Ente et Essentia commentary into his more logically-focused works: the DNA and the De Conceptu Entis.⁷⁰ Negatively, he wishes to prove that analogy does not succumb to the fallacy of equivocation. Positively, Cajetan wants to show the “hidden” unity and identity (unitatis et identitatis latet) in an analogue.⁷¹ (The importance of perfect vs. imperfect concepts and of perfect vs. imperfect abstraction is evident here.⁷²) Specifically, he rejects Scotus’s presentation of univocity (and those who attempt to configure analogy according to the modality of Scotistic univocity), and he extols analogy as, itself, bearing sufficient unity for safeguarding valid syllogistic inference.

Joshua P. Hochschild explains that even the “threefold division of modes of analogy” that introduces the DNA serves as “a three-fold answer to the question of how there can be a mean between univocation and equivocation; and analogy of proportionality is given primacy because… it involves a non-univocal term which does not precipitate the fallacy of equivocation.”⁷³ In other words, “Cajetan defends demonstration through analogous terms by arguing (with increasing awareness of the need for clarity through his In De Ente et Essentia, De Nominum Analogia, and De Conceptu Entis) that where there is proportional unity between analogates, the formal concept of one analogate is, by proportionality, the formal concept of the other analogate.”⁷⁴

In sum, Cajetan believes that a doctrine of analogy configured according to proportionality represents a solid foundation—metaphysically robust and logically valid—upon which the philosopher and the theologian can erect the ladder of speculative ascent to God.⁷⁵ Regardless of whatever further criticisms Cajetan’s analogical doctrine may warrant, it is within a contextual appreciation of the problems of analogy that his contributions to the topic—along with those of others in the Thomist tradition—can begin to come into clearer view.

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1. “Since around 1950 it [the adjective ‘Thomist’] has been in competition with a new word, ‘Thomasian,’ although this coinage has not been accepted everywhere or by everyone. ‘Thomasian’ is sometimes used to refer to what relates directly to Aquinas, and the literal exegesis of what he wrote, while ‘Thomist’ and ‘Thomism’ are used to refer to his followers” (Jean-Pierre Torrell, “Thomism,” in Encyclopedia of Christian Theology, ed. Jean-Yves Lacoste, vol. 3 P-Z [New York: Routledge, 2005], 1578–83 at p. 1578).↩︎

2. “In [Aquinas’s] systematic works he almost exclusively deals with the idea of analogy in the context of divine predication.” Thus, the “‘theological’ application of this notion was the main motive behind the medieval doctrine” of analogy (Jan A. Aertsen, Medieval Philosophy as Transcendental Thought: From Philip the Chancellor (ca. 1225) to Francisco Suárez [Leiden: Brill, 2012], 266). Nonetheless, one readily recognizes and agrees with Mark D. Jordan’s observation: “While it is clear that the divine names are one instance of names said analogously, it is not the case that the study of analogy is the same as the study of the divine names” (“The Names of God and the Being of Names,” in The Existence and Nature of God, ed. Alfred J. Freddoso [Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983], 161–90 at p. 162).↩︎

3. For contemporary studies of Aquinas’s metaphysics, see Aertsen, Medieval Philosophy as Transcendental Thought; John F. Wippel, The Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas: From Finite Being to Uncreated Being (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2000). See also the classic notes of Marianus Deandrea, O.P.: Praelectiones metaphysicae iuxta principia D. Thomae: Introductio in Metaphysicam – De ente et eius transcendentalibus proprietatibus (Rome: Angelicum, 1951); Praelectiones metaphysicae iuxta principia D. Thomae: II – De entis distinctione. De causis (Rome: Angelicum, 1951).↩︎

4. See Summa Theologiae (ST) I, q. 14, a. 5; ST I, q. 79.↩︎

5. For contemporary studies of Aquinas’s teaching on human knowledge, see L. M. Régis, O.P., Epistemology, trans. Imelda Choquette Byrne (New York: Macmillan, 1959); Robert Edward Brennan, O.P., Thomistic Psychology: A Philosophic Analysis of the Nature of Man, ed. Cajetan Cuddy, O.P. (Tacoma, WA: Cluny Media, 2016).↩︎

6. See ST I, q. 13, a. 1.↩︎

7. See Thomas Aquinas, In III Phys. lect. 5, no. 322 (Turin-Rome: Marietti, 1954).↩︎

8. For contemporary accounts of Aquinas’s teaching on logic and predication, see Robert W. Schmidt, S.J., The Domain of Logic According to Saint Thomas (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966); D. Q. McInerny, An Introduction to Foundational Logic (Elmhurst Township, PA: Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, 2012).↩︎

9. ST I, q. 13, a. 1, ad 1. Unless otherwise indicated, all English translations of the Summa theologiae are my own (and they are based on the Piana/Ottawa edition of the ST).↩︎

10. ST I, q. 13, a. 1.↩︎

11. ST I, q. 13, a. 5.↩︎

12. Ibid.↩︎

13. Ibid. See De Veritate (DV), q. 2, a. 11.↩︎

14. Thomas Aquinas, DV, q. 2, a. 11. All English translations of the De Veritate (Leonine ed.) are my own.↩︎

15. Ibid. See ST I, q. 14, a. 5.↩︎

16. Ibid. See In I Sentences (In I Sent.), d. 35, q. 1, a. 4.↩︎

17. ST I, q. 13, a. 5.↩︎

18. Ibid.↩︎

19. Aquinas scholars have identified twelve or so key passages in which Aquinas parses analogy according to its various kinds and divisions. See Wippel, Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas, 501–75; John R. Mortensen, “Understanding St. Thomas on Analogy” (Ph.D. diss., Pontificia Universitas Sanctae Crucis, 2006), 83–106.↩︎

20. Garrett R. Smith, “The Analogy of Being in the Scotist Tradition,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 93 (2019): 633–73 at p. 636.↩︎

21. In terms of a proximate influence on Aquinas’s thought, his revered teacher, Albertus Magnus (+1280), espoused a fundamentally different conception of analogy. See Victor M. Salas, Jr., “Albert the Great and ‘Univocal Analogy,’” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 87 (2013): 611–35.↩︎

22. See Gerald B. Phelan, Saint Thomas and Analogy (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1948), 3.↩︎

23. Mortensen, “Understanding St. Thomas on Analogy,” 83.↩︎

24. See In I Sent. d. 19, q. 5, a. 2, ad 1; DV q. 2, a. 11; De Potentia, bk. 3, q. 7, a. 7; Summa Contra Gentiles I, qq. 32–34; ST I, q. 13, a. 5. For considerations of these texts from Aquinas, in addition to the aforementioned resources from Wippel and Mortensen, see George P. Klubertanz, S.J., St. Thomas Aquinas on Analogy: A Textual Analysis and Systematic Synthesis (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1960); Charles De Koninck, “Metaphysics and the Interpretation of Words,” Laval Théologique et Philosophique 17 (1961): 22–34; David B. Burrell, Analogy and Philosophical Language (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1973); Ralph McInerny, Aquinas and Analogy (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1996); Bernard Montagne, O.P., The Doctrine of the Analogy of Being According to Thomas Aquinas, trans. E. M. Macierowski (Milwaukee, W.I.: Marquette University Press, 2004); Lawrence Dewan, O.P., “St. Thomas and Analogy: The Logician and the Metaphysician,” in Form and Being: Studies in Thomistic Metaphysics (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2006), 81–95; Steven A. Long, Analogia Entis: On the Analogy of Being, Metaphysics, and the Act of Faith (Notre Dame, I.N.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2011); Joshua P. Hochschild, “Proportionality and Divine Naming: Did St. Thomas Change His Mind about Analogy?,” The Thomist 77 (2013): 531–58.↩︎

25. For example: “After the De Veritate Thomas’s doctrine on the subject of transcendental analogy has changed” (Montagne, Doctrine of Analogy, 78). “By the time of De Veritate, q. 23 Thomas no longer regards proportionality as the only way of accounting for a creature’s likeness to God” (Wippel, Metaphysical Thought of Thomas Aquinas, 555).↩︎

26. Rudi te Velde, Aquinas on God: The ‘Divine Science’ of the Summa Theologiae (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2006), 109.↩︎

27. For some correctives to contemporary critiques of Scotus, see Richard Cross, “‘Angels Fear to Tread’: Duns Scotus and Radical Orthodoxy,” Antonianum 76 (2001): 7–41; Emmanuel Perrier, O.P., “Duns Scotus Facing Reality: Between Absolute Contingency and Unquestionable Consistency,” Modern Theology 21 (2005): 619–43; Daniel P. Horan, O.F.M., Postmodernity and Univocity: A Critical Account of Radical Orthodoxy and John Duns Scotus (Minneapolis, M.N.: Fortress Press, 2014).↩︎

28. Scott M. Williams helpfully summarizes “three common exegetical mistakes about Scotus’s doctrine of univocity”: “John Duns Scotus,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Epistemology of Theology, ed. William J. Abraham and Frederick D. Aquino (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 421–33 at pp. 424–25. For attempts at correcting misconceptions of Scotus’s teaching, see Smith, “Analogy of Being,” 633–73; R. Trent Pomplun, “John Duns Scotus in the History of Medieval Philosophy from the Sixteenth Century to Étienne Gilson (†1978),” Bulletin de philosophie médiévale 58 (2016): 355–445; John Inglis, Spheres of Philosophical Inquiry and the Historiography of Medieval Philosophy (Leiden: Brill, 1998); Mary Beth Ingham, “Re-Situating Scotist Thought,” Modern Theology 21 (2005): 609–18.↩︎

29. See Stephen D. Dumont, “Henry of Ghent and Duns Scotus,” Medieval Philosophy 3 (1998): 291–328; Tobias Hoffmann, “Henry of Ghent’s Influence on John Duns Scotus’s Metaphysics,” in A Companion to Henry of Ghent, ed. Gordon A. Wilson (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 337–67; Williams, “John Duns Scotus,” 421–22.↩︎

30. See Giorgio Pini, “Univocity in Scotus’s Questiones super Metaphysicam: The Solution to a Riddle,” Medioevo 30 (2005): 69–110.↩︎

31. See Giorgio Pini, “Species, Concept, and Thing: Theories of Signification in the Second Half of the Thirteenth Century,” Medieval Philosophy and Theology 8 (1999): 21–52. E. J. Ashworth has also written a series of very helpful essays on the themes comprised in these debates: “Signification and Modes of Signifying in Thirteenth-Century Logic: A Preface to Aquinas on Analogy,” Mediaeval Philosophy and Theology 1 (1991): 39–67.; “Analogy and Equivocation in Thirteenth-Century Logic: Aquinas in Context,” Medieval Studies 54 (1992): 94–135; and “Metaphor and the Logicians from Aristotle to Cajetan,” Vivarium 45 (2007): 311–27.↩︎

32. Duns Scotus, Reportatio I-A, ed. and trans. Allan B. Wolter and Oleg V. Bychkov, 2 vols. (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute Press, 2004–2008), d. 3, q. 1, n. 38 (1:196); as cited (with “translation slightly modified”) in Richard Cross, “Are Names Said of God and Creatures Univocally?,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 92 (2018): 313–20 at p. 316.↩︎

33. Cross, “Are Names Said of God and Creatures Univocally?,” 320.↩︎

34. Williams, “John Duns Scotus,” 423. For more on the development of Scotus’s views on scientia, see Steven P. Marrone, “Scotus at Paris on the Criteria for Scientific Knowledge,” in Philosophical Debates at Paris in the Early Fourteenth Century, ed. Stephen F. Brown, Thomas Dewender, and Theo Kobusch (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 383–400.↩︎

35. See Thomas Williams, “The Doctrine of Univocity is True and Salutary,” Modern Theology 21 (2005): 575–85.↩︎

36. See Stephen P. Marrone, “The Notion of Univocity in Duns Scotus’s Early Works,” Franciscan Studies 43 (1983): 347–95; Giorgio Pini, Categories and Logic in Duns Scotus: An Interpretation of Aristotle’s Categories in the Late Thirteenth Century (Leiden: Brill, 2002); Richard Cross, “Duns Scotus and Analogy: A Brief Note,” The Modern Schoolman 89 (2012): 147–54.↩︎

37. S. Y. Watson, S.J., “Univocity and Analogy of Being in the Philosophy of Duns Scotus,” Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association (1958): 189–206 at p. 191. Richard Cross observes: “The univocity theory is fundamentally a cognitive theory. It makes important semantic assumptions, but—contrary to the rather simple-minded way it is sometimes presented in modern theological literature—it does not make any metaphysical assumptions” (Duns Scotus on God [Burlington, V.T.: Ashgate, 2005], 254).↩︎

38. Ibid., 639.↩︎

39. See Richard Cross, Duns Scotus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 37. For those who argue that these represent more than merely necessary conditions, see Mary Beth Ingham and Mechthild Dreyer, Philosophical Vision of John Duns Scotus: An Introduction (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2004); Stephen D. Dumont, “Transcendental Being: Scotus and the Scotists,” Topoi 11 (1992): 135–48.↩︎

40. Cross, Duns Scotus, 37. Emphasis original. Elsewhere Cross suggests: “Scotus does not have a theory of analogy, but merely sets out a necessary condition for it” (“Duns Scotus and Analogy,” 151).↩︎

41. Mann, “Natural and Supernatural Knowledge of God,” 247. “Thus, some component of any analogical concept of God must be univocal. The combined effect of Scotus’s two negative points is that if we are to have any concept of God, it must either be or contain a concept univocal between God and naturally known creatures” (ibid.).↩︎

42. Williams, “John Duns Scotus,” 425. For more on Scotus’s conception of analogous unity, see Domenic D’Ettore, “Analogous Unity in the Writings of John Duns Scotus,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 60 (2022): 561–89.↩︎

43. D’Ettore, Analogy after Aquinas, 182.↩︎

44. Rudi te Velde, “Metaphysics and the Question of Creation: Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus and Us,” in Belief and Metaphysics, ed. Conor Cunningham and Peter M. Candler, Jr. (London: S.C.M. Press, 2007), 73–99 at p. 83. See also John Frederick Peifer, Ph.L., S.T.L., The Concept in Thomism (New York: Bookman Associates, Inc., 1952).↩︎

45. For examples of different Thomists giving interpretative precedence to some texts of Aquinas over others, see Domenic D’Ettore, “Una ratio versus Diversae rationes: Three Interpretations of Summa theologiae I, Q. 13, AA. 1–6,” Nova et Vetera 17 (2019): 39–55.↩︎

46. For a concise account of the Thomist tradition’s essential continuity with Thomas Aquinas, see Romanus Cessario, OP, and Cajetan Cuddy, O.P., Thomas and the Thomists: The Achievement of Thomas Aquinas and His Interpreters (Minneapolis, M.N.: Fortress Press, 2017).↩︎

47. Cross, Duns Scotus, 45. Scotus argued that there can be “complexity in God without composition” in God. This proposition, putatively, “allows Scotus to escape the unwanted conclusion that each attribute in God is identical with God and identical with each other, while at the same time upholding the motivation for simplicity in the first place: God’s aseity.” In other words, Scotus proposed “a middle way between the problematic view that God has attributes that are distinct from his essence an upon which he depends, and the classical medieval view of simplicity that the distinction between the various attributes in God is merely a distinction on our part and not a mind-independent feature of the divine nature itself” (Jeff Steele and Thomas Williams, “Complexity without Composition: Duns Scotus on Divine Simplicity,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 93 [2019]: 611–31 at p. 615). Emphasis original. See Cross, Duns Scotus on God, 99–114; Smith, “Analogy of Being,” 642.↩︎

48. For more on Aquinas’s articulation of the divine simplicity, see Juan José Herrera, La simplicidad divina según santo Tomás de Aquino (San Miguel de Tucumán: Ediciones de la Universidad del Norte Santo Tomás de Aquino, 2011); Serge-Thomas Bonino, O.P., Dieu, « Celui qui est » (De Deo ut uno) (Paris: Parole et Silence, 2016), 229–96.↩︎

49. Michael Tavuzzi, O.P., “Hervaeus Natalis and the Philosophical Logic of the Thomism of the Renaissance,” Doctor Communis 45 (1992): 132–52 at pp. 133–34. Joshua P. Hochschild observes that “in only two texts [ST I, q. 13, a. 5 and DPD, bk. 3, q. 7, a. 7] does Aquinas explicitly acknowledge the need for analogy to have sufficient unity to avoid the fallacy of equivocation” (“Did Aquinas Answer Cajetan’s Question? Aquinas’s Semantic Rules for Analogy and the Interpretation of De Nominum Analogia,” Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 77 [2003]: 273–88 at p. 275). Thus, it seems, that “Aquinas only asserts, without explanation of how it is possible, that analogy does exhibit sufficient unity to sustain valid reasoning” (ibid., 276). Emphasis original.↩︎

50. For studies of this work, see Bruno Pinchard, Métaphysique et sémantique autour de Cajetan: Étude et traduction du De nominum analogia (Paris: Vrin, 1987); Joshua P. Hochschild, The Semantics of Analogy: Rereading Cajetan’s De Nominum Analogia (Notre Dame, I.N.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010).↩︎

51. Michael Tavuzzi, O.P., “Some Renaissance Thomist Divisions of Analogy,” Angelicum 70 (1993): 93–121 at p. 93. See Ashworth, “Analogical Concepts,” 399–413.↩︎

52. D’Ettore, Analogy after Aquinas, 144. For more on Cajetan’s life and thought, see Bruno Pinchard and Saverio Ricci, eds., Rationalisme analogique et humanisme théologique: La culture de Thomas de Vio ‘Il Gaetano’ (Naples: Vivarium, 1993); Jared Wicks, S.J., “Thomas de Vio Cajetan (1469–1534),” in The Reformation Theologians: An Introduction to Theology in the Early Modern Period, ed. Carter Lindberg (Malden, M.A.: Blackwell Publishers, 2002), 269–83; Guillaume de Tanoüarn, Cajétan: Le Personnalisme Intégral (Paris: Cerf, 2009); Michael O’Connor, Cajetan’s Biblical Commentaries: Motive and Method (Leiden: Brill, 2017); Gregory Hrynkiw, Cajetan on Sacred Doctrine (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, forthcoming); Cajetan Cuddy, O.P., “Sixteenth-Century Reception of Aquinas by Cajetan,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Reception of Aquinas, ed. Matthew Levering and Marcus Plested (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021), 144–58.↩︎

53. “Ecce textus Aristotelis expresse dicens quod analoga media sumenda quandoque sunt, quae licet univoca non sint, sequuntur tamen ea quaedam ac si essent univoca, ut patet in spina, etc.” (Thomas de Vio Cajetan, Commentaria in Posteriora Analytica Aristotelis, ed. E. Babin and W. Baumgaertner [Québec: University of Laval Press, 1952]), bk. II, c. 11 (p. 173). Translation mine.↩︎

54. “Pure aequivocis convenit habere rationem substantiae diversam penitus, analogis vero diversam aliquo modo” (Thomas de Vio Cajetan, Commentaria in Praedicamenta Aristotelis, ed. M.-H. Laurent, O.P. [Rome: Angelicum, 1939], 10). Translation taken from unpublished manuscript: R. F. Larcher, O.P., “Cardinal Cajetan’s Commentary on Aristotle’s Categories” (Washington, D.C.: np, 1980), 8.↩︎

55. “Licet ad aequivocationem sufficiat qualiscunque diversitas rationis secundum illud nomen, ad univocationem tamen non sufficit qualiscunque identitas rationis secundum illud nomen, sed exigitur quod ratio univocatorum, quae attenditur penes illud nomen in quo univocantur, sit totaliter eadem et nihil plus aut minus includat unum quam reliquum in ratione illius nominis” (Cajetan, Commentaria in Praedicamenta, 10 [Larcher, 8]).↩︎

56. “Dicito ergo tu analoga sub aequivocis comprehendi, et his chimeris mentem ne impleas ” (Cajetan, Commentaria in Praedicamenta, 13 [Larcher, 9]). See ST I, q. 13, a. 5, sc.↩︎

57. See Thomas de Vio Cajetan, In De Ente et Essentia D. Thomæ Aquinatis Commentaria, ed. M.-H. Laurent (Turin: Marietti, 1934), c. 1, no. 14 (pp. 25–29); and c. 3, no. 48 (pp. 71–74). See Hochschild, Semantics of Analogy, 85–98. Although this distinction is founded on Aquinas’s In I Sent. d. 2, q. 1, a. 3, D’Ettore suggest that Natalis might be “the first thinker to distinguish explicitly the ratio produced in the intellect by the intellect’s own act from the ratio in re which the intellect grasps” (Analogy after Aquinas, 35). For more on the development of the distinction between formal and objective concepts in broader historical context, see Marco Forlivesi, “La distinction entre concept formel et concept objectif: Suárez, Pasqualigo, Mastri,” Les Études philosophiques 60 (2002): 3–30.↩︎

58. Hervaeus Natalis, Quodlibet 2, q. 7, in Quolibeta Heruei: Subtillissima Heruei Natalis Britonis (Venice, 1513; reprinted in Ridgewood, N.J.: Gregg, 1966) (as translated in D’Ettore, Analogy after Aquinas, 36).↩︎

59. See Natalis, Quodlibet 2, q. 7. D’Ettore analyzes and critiques Natalis’s solution to the “equivocation problem” in Analogy after Aquinas, 40–43. Some scholars have argued that Natalis’s writings bear noticeable traces of Scotism. For example, see Isabel Iribarren, “The Scotist Background in Hervaeus Natalis’s Interpretation of Thomism,” The Thomist 66 (2002): 607–27. Like Scotus, Natalis strongly critiqued Henry of Ghent, see Elliott B. Allen, C.S.B., “Hervaeus Natalis: An Early ‘Thomist’ on the Notion of Being,” Mediaeval Studies 22 (1960): 1–14. For a recent consideration of Natalis’s logical writings that characterizes him as “A Non-Thomist with Thomistic Answers in an Aristotelian Tone,” see Matthew K. Minerd, “Thomism and the Formal Object of Logic,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 93 (2019): 411–44 at pp. 422–34.↩︎

60. Thomas Sutton (†1315) was one of the earliest Thomists to engage the univocist critique of analogy. See Joseph J. Przezdziecki, “Thomas of Sutton’s Critique of the Doctrine of Univocity,” in An Etienne Gilson Tribute, ed. Charles J. O’Neil (Milwaukee, W.I.: Marquette University Press, 1959), 189–208. “The key to Sutton’s defense of demonstration using analogous terms is the proportional unity between the analogates…. Sutton treats proportional unity as lesser than generic unity, but a true form of unity nonetheless” (D’Ettore, Analogy after Aquinas, 57–58).↩︎

61. See Serge-Thomas Bonino, O.P., “Le concept d’étant et la connaissance de Dieu d’après Jean Cabrol (Capreolus),” Revue Thomiste 95 (1995): 109–36; Domenic D’Ettore, “John Capreolus on Names Said Analogously of God and Creatures,” The Thomist 77 (2013): 395–418.↩︎

62. John Capreolus, Defensiones Theologiae Divi Thomae Aquinatis (Tours: Alfred Cattier, 1900), l. 1, d. 2, q. 1.↩︎

63. “Adverte hic ne imbuaris ignorantia pravae dispositionis, quod glossa ista (quae unde venerit nescio) scilicet univoca dicuntur quorum ratio est eadem et aequaliter participata, destruit textum, quum vere univoca sub aequivocis ponit et a logica veritate aliena est” (Cajetan, Commentaria in Praedicamenta, 12 [Larcher, 9]).↩︎

64. See D’Ettore, Analogy after Aquinas, 128–30.↩︎

65. “‘Analogy’ is said in many ways…. Every scholar will admit that even in the writings of St. Thomas the word ‘analogy’ does not have a univocal meaning” (Mortensen, “Understanding St. Thomas on Analogy,” 7).↩︎

66. Cajetan, In De Ente et Essentia, c. 2, no. 21 (as translated in D’Ettore, Analogy after Aquinas, 128).↩︎

67. Ibid., (as translated in D’Ettore, Analogy after Aquinas, 129).↩︎

68. For one of the best contemporary presentations of analogy of “proper proportionality” in the Cajetanian tradition, see Yves R. Simon, “On Order in Analogical Sets,” in Philosopher at Work: Essays by Yves R. Simon (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 1999), 135–71. See James F. Anderson, Reflections on Analogy of Being (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1967), 46–79; Long, Analogia Entis, 13–37.↩︎

69. See D’Ettore, Analogy after Aquinas, 138–43; Domenic D’Ettore, “One Is in the Definition of All: The Renaissance Thomist Controversy Over a ‘Rule’ for Names Said by Analogy,” The Thomist 82 (2018): 89–111; John of St. Thomas, The Material Logic of John of St. Thomas, trans. Yves R. Simon, John J. Glanville, G. Donald Hollenhorst (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955), 152–83; Domenic D’Ettore, “‘Not a Little Confusing’: Francis Silvestri of Ferrara’s Hybrid Thomist Doctrine of Analogy,” American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 90 (2016): 101–23.↩︎

70. With reference to the metaphysical principles that underlie Cajetan’s logical engagement with the problem of analogy, Hochschild observes: “Cajetan is indeed concerned to answer particular questions raised by Scotus, but in doing so he refuses to adopt, and pointedly criticize, key semantic assumptions behind Scotus’s position. Furthermore, Cajetan’s response to Scotus confirms that while he intended to answer semantic or ‘conceptualist’ objections with his own alternative semantic analysis of analogy, Cajetan saw that the Thomistic disagreement with Scotus could not be addressed only at the semantic level but depended ultimately on distinctions at the level of metaphysics” (Joshua P. Hochschild, “Cajetan and Scotus on Univocity,” Proceedings of the Society for Medieval Logic and Metaphysics 7 [2007]: 32–42 at pp. 31–32). See Joshua P. Hochschild, “Logic or Metaphysics in Cajetan’s Theory of Analogy: Can Extrinsic Denomination be a Semantic Property?,” Proceedings of the Society for Medieval Logic and Metaphysics 1 (2001): 45–69.↩︎

71. Thomas de Vio Cajetan, De Nominum Analogia, ed. P. N. Zammit, O.P. (Rome: Angelicum, 1934), c. 10, no. 106 (p. 80).↩︎

72. See Cajetan’s De Conceptu Entis, nos. 3–7; Simon, “On Order in Analogical Sets,” 139–45; John Deely, “The Absence of Analogy,” The Review of Metaphysics 55 (2002): 521–50; Josh P. Hochschild, “The Rest of Cajetan’s Analogy Theory: De Nominum Analogia, Chapters 4–11,” International Philosophical Quarterly 45 (2005): 341–56. The writings of Edward D. Simmons’ on abstraction are also profoundly helpful: “The Thomistic Doctrine of Intellectual Abstraction for the Three Levels of Science: Exposition and Defense” (Ph.D. diss., University of Notre Dame, 1952); “In Defense of Total and Formal Abstraction,” The New Scholasticism 29 (1955): 427–40; “The Thomistic Doctrine of the Three Degrees of Formal Abstraction,” The Thomist 22 (1959): 37–67. Of course, John of St. Thomas is also eminently insightful about the unity of imperfect abstraction in his Cursus Philosophicus as well: Material Logic, 178–83.↩︎

73. Hochschild, “Did Aquinas Answer Cajetan’s Question?,” 274–75.↩︎

74. D’Ettore, Analogy after Aquinas, 143.↩︎

75. As others have noted, this configuration need not exclude the integration of other types of analogy (i.e., analogy of attribution). See James F. Anderson, “Analogy: A Study in Thomistic Metaphysics” (Ph.D. diss., University of Toronto, 1940); James F. Anderson, The Bond of Being: An Essay on Analogy and Existence (St. Louis, M.O.: B. Herder Book Co., 1949); Steven A. Long, “Thomas Aquinas, the Analogy of Being, and the Analogy of Transferred Proportion,” in The Discovery of Being and Thomas Aquinas: Philosophical and Theological Perspectives, ed. Christopher M. Cullen, S.J., and Franklin T. Harkins (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2019), 173–92; Steven A. Long, “The Order of the Universe,” in Dio creatore e la creazione come case comune: Prospettive Tomiste, ed. Serge-Thomas Bonino and Guido Mazzotta (Vatican City: Urbaniana University Press, 2018), 117–36. For more on supernatural proportionality, see Matthew K. Minerd’s forthcoming essay in Nova et Vetera: “The Superanalogy of Faith.”↩︎