Property 1, form
Sememe A Property 2, cause
Property 3, matter
Property 4, end or functionThe idea was already present among the Scholastics: see, for instance, how Thomas (De principiis naturae, 6) admits that sometimes the like properties are predicated with respect to the cause, and at others with respect to the end.
To formulate the metonymy drink a glass (container for content), it is not necessary to compare two terms: one identifies in the encyclopedic definition of the glass the fact that it contains wine; the substitution is therefore one of semic interdependence within the same sememe. To call the glass the shield of Dionysus on the other hand I must compare the properties of Dionysus and the god of war Ares, recognize that in both the same morphological property appears (a typical instrument or emblem), identify a property that the two instruments have in common (both being round and concave in form), and activate the exchange. In both cases the substitution first occurs on account of the semic identity among sememes, then two sememes are crossed with two semes.
Now, it appears that metaphor imposes a comparison between two entities that were previously separate, thereby increasing our knowledge, whereas metonymy presumes prior knowledge of the thing played upon. Hence the greater cognitive power of metaphor.
Attribution seems to be akin to metonymy: we call medicine “healthy” because we already know that the property of medicine is to procure health. But if this is the case, then many of the metaphors cited by Aristotle, from genre to species and vice versa, are in fact forms of metonymy or synecdoche, given the fact that genre ought to be a property of the species. Just as being an animal is a property of mankind, and makes it possible for Francesca da Rimini to address Dante with the vocative “O aminal grazioso e benigno,” similarly standing still is a property of being at anchor. We have only to look at Emanuele Tesauro’s Cannocchiale aristotelico ([1670]1968: 284). He has no qualms about calling metaphors from genre to species and vice versa “analogiae attributionis.”
On the other hand, when Aristotle calls the stone shameless, he is attributing to it a property (certainly justified by the context) that had not previously been recognized. Let us take another look at the example calling pirates commercial purveyors. First of all, a four-term analogy is set up: the pirates are to the transportation of stolen property as merchants are to that of the goods they acquire. The impression of identifying a genre X, of which pirates and purveyors are both species, is a consequence of the analogical operation. In fact it takes two independent sememes and identifies in them a common property (that of being transporters of goods). Only when we have understood the metaphor can we say that pirates and purveyors belong (unexpectedly) to the same genre, or the same whole. The property they share, surprisingly brought to the fore, becomes a common genre.
purveyors
transporters
piratesThe entire Scholastic discussion of the analogia entis (despite the great variety of its outcomes) is fundamentally based on a choice between analogy of attribution and analogy of proportionality, and the examples are similar to those given by Aristotle when it comes to finding attributions or proportions between medicine and health and meadows and smiles.
The real problem, already looming in Dionysius, arises when the divine names come into play. When we say that medicine is healthy is that the same kind of attribution as saying that God is Good? We recognize the properties of health and we are familiar with the properties of both medicine and urine (one causes health, the other reveals it). Combining together known properties, we perform the attribution. What happens, however, in the case of the divine names?
There are only two possible solutions.35
(i) We know the goodness of things per prius and we infer per posterius that the cause of this goodness must exist in God. But what we have at this point is an inference from something known to something that must exist, but whose nature is unknown to us. And it is not enough to suppose that the cause must somehow resemble the effect. All the more since, in the course of his discussion of analogy, Thomas (in Summa Theologiae I, 45, 7, for example, following the lead of Augustine) distinguishes two types of likeness between cause and effect. The effect may represent “quantum ad similitudinem formae” (“by reason of the similarity of its form”) and this is the case with the “repraesentatio imaginis” (“the representation of an image”), in other words, of the statue of Mercury that resembles Mercury. But it can also represent by “causalitas causae” (“the causality of the cause”), in which case there is no morphological likeness but rather “repraesentatio per vestigium” (“representation by way of a visible trace”), as occurs both in the relationship between smoke and fire and that between a man and the footprints he leaves behind him. (Thomas—following Albertus Magnus—grants that the footprints may resemble the form of the foot, but he points out that the imprint of the foot is not similar to the man who left it and therefore cannot tell us who that man was.36
In Scriptum super libros Sententiarum I, 8, 1, 2 he gives the example of the sun, which produces heat but is not hot in itself.) If then we go back from the goodness of things to their divine cause, we do so out of causalitas causae, but we have no idea of what this goodness is like. We call Goodness the cause of goodness merely to make up for the penuria nominum, and hence a case of equivocation. It is as if, seeing smoke and not knowing anything about the fire that caused it is, we were to name this unknown quantity Hypersubstantial Smoke, thinking that what we were faced with was an example of repraesentatio imaginis and not repraesentio per vestigium. Let us consider the disturbing consequences of such a solution: if the mechanism of attribution were still valid, given that, among our actions and among the events of the world, some things are bad (a crime, rotten food, an illness), why do we not attribute the cause of these things to God, thereby making him responsible for Evil? Because we know a priori that there is no Evil in God (whereas there is Goodness). But if we already knew that, there was no need to look for an analogy. All that remains, then, is the second conclusion.
(ii) We know (by faith or revelation) the attributes of the Divinity, and it is therefore per prius, on the basis of these attributes, that we predicate per posterius the goodness of terrestrial things. We know, in other words, that God is ontologically Good per prius and that things are good per posterius, insofar as they share in the goodness of the Divinity. The attribute “good” characteristic of a certain thing is the equivalent of the attribute “animal” that characterizes a cat. We understand that a cat is an animal because we already know what an animal is. Thus we have a predication of a metonymical type from one known thing to another known thing: the attribution does not lead us to discover anything we did not already know.
Alternatively, predication in divinis implies an analogy of proportionality.
But, in the case of the Aristotelian analogy, we discover an identity of properties between two things both of whose properties are known (the discovery involves the unsuspected relationship established between two known things). In an analogy extended in divinis, on the other hand, the trick would be to identify (and this would be truly unsuspected) an identity of properties between something about which we know everything and something about which we know nothing. In other words, the proportion established is not (as was the case with the shield of Ares and of the cup of Dionysus) A:B = C:D, but A:B = x:y, where x and y are unknown properties.
This would in fact be the proportionality according to which we could say that human knowledge bears the same relation to the human mind as divine knowledge does to the divine mind. The most one could hazard is that between divine knowledge and the divine mind (both unknown) a relationship is established in some way similar to the one established between human knowledge and the human soul. But similar how? By repraesentatio imaginis or by causalitas causae? The comparison established between Achilles and the lion works as long as we already know what the wrath of Achilles is like, as well as the fierceness of the lion, and only then does the wrath of Achilles appear more convincing. But saying that divine
