Being and Natural Law: Being and Ratio Entis

IN PRIOR POSTINGS WE HAVE DISCUSSED the issue of analogical thinking and the concept of analogon and analogates. We used the examples of analogons of "charming cities," of "great ball players," and "holiness" and "law." The first two were examples of analogy of proportion. The latter two of analogies of proportionality. It is clear that these analogons have limited analogates. The analogon of "charming cities," for example, would probably not include Al-Fashir, the capital of city of North Darfur in the Sudan. The analogon of "great ball players" does not include most of us. The analogon of saints does not include the vicious or the unbeliever. The analogon of Law does not include the unjust law.

Some analogons, however, are distinctive because they include all things. These analogons have everything as their analogates. These analogons are known as the Transcendentals. Being, Unity, the True, and the Good are such transcendental analogons.

The transcendentals are what is behind the intellectual and moral life of man. Dr. Knasas focused on the analogon of being, on the ratio entis, before going to the analogon of the good, the ratio boni. The analogon of being has to be a transcendental, and has to embrace all things and all their differences, because if it did not include the differences in things, if the differences were somehow excluded from the analogon, then "the differences would reduce themselves to non-being," and this would mean that the differences were not real things, and being is "one undifferentiated thing." For the differences to be real--for them to have being--they need to be included in the analagon of being. Differences in things, then, are included within the ratio entis. This would include all substances, all accidents.

The Good Samaritan (1849) by Eugène Delacroix (1798 – 1863)
The Good Samaritan Recognized His Neighbor as
Fellow "Intellector of Being" and "Willer of Good"

Knowledge of transcendentals is, in a manner of speaking, "useless" knowledge as Maritain called it. It is "useless" because it is not the kind of knowledge that yields any material boon. It is not the Baconian type of scientific knowledge expressed in his Meditationes Sacrae, wherein "knowledge is power," scientia potentia est.It is not the knowledge of American pragmatism. We cannot put this knowledge to work in any practical way, and so it is not likely that William James would have embraced the importance of the transcendentals. It is knowledge for knowledge's own sake; it is knowledge whose very value is having it. It is the knowledge that Socrates referred to when he said that the unexamined life is not worth living, ὁ δὲ ἀνεξέταστος βίος οὐ βιωτὸς ἀνθρώπῳ (Apology, 38a). It is this knowledge that, in particular, enriches human life: crescat scientia, vita excolatur. The pursuit of being, the value of pursuing knowledge of the transcendentals, is only known by those who Dr. Knasas said are "slain by being." To some extent, we are wired for it. Therefore, the man who frustrates his wife by his attraction to baseball is perhaps trying to understand the analogon "great ball players." He has misdirected the natural desire to understand the greatest of all analogons, the transcendentals. The pursuit of the knowledge of the one, being, of the good, of the true is a pursuit that, though "useless," is never wasted.

To intellectually apprehend being is to experience an earthquake in one's intellectual life. Thereafter one is not the same. Everything becomes of interest, because every thing in its uniqueness gives one another look at the ratio entis. . . . Jacques Maritain wrote most passionately of the intellectual perception of being. Maritain called it the intuition of being, l'intuition de l'être.

This intuition of being that is in man is his unique characteristic. Because of the intuition of being, we are "intellectors of being." No other animal appears to have this intuition, and it is the fundamental ability to be "intellectors of being" that characterizes us as a rational animal, a ζῷον λογικόν. It is also what makes us a ζῷον πολιτικόν φιλάλληλον, a political and philanthropic animal. Ultimately, we recognize not only that "I" am an "intellector of being," and that I therefore have a dignity above other beings, one that demands a moral response (love yourself). But my recognition that others of my kind are also "intellectors of being" demands a moral response to them (love your neighbor as yourself). It is the fact that we recognize that we are "intellectors of being" that is, in Dr. Knasas's view, the source of moral obligation.

But that begins to take us to the notion of the good, the ratio boni, which is a matter we will reserve for our next posting on Dr. Knasas's lectures.

Being and Natural Law: On Vilnius and Kaunas and Koufax and Mays

IN TRYING TO GRASP AT THE SOURCE for the moral imperative, the "oughtness" or the obligation-in-freedom that humans sense, Dr. Knasas begins with Thomistic epistemology. As we have seen, Dr. Knasas proposes a realistic epistemology, one that proposes that our cognition, informed by our senses, is directly impressed with the real. It is from our minds so impressed that we begin the process of intellection. The process of intellection is the means by which we distill, as it were, commonalities or the "sameness" among things.

As an example of this process, Dr. Knasas drew three triangles on the blackboard, and asked the question: "How many objects are we aware of?"

Triangles: 3 or 4 Objects?

Naturally, the response was, "Three." "Four," Dr. Knasas correctly pointed out. There are the three physical triangles, and then there is the fourth object, intellectual in nature, of which we are aware, namely, "triangularity." One sees "triangularity" along with the three triangles one sees through the senses. The process of distilling commonalities or sameness in things is what is called "intellection." Another word for it is "conceptualization." It is, at least in the Aristotelian and Thomistic tradition, a process of abstraction. It is not a process of anamnesis or reminiscence such as Plato proposed. Additionally, this "triangularity" is not something with real existence such as Plato problematically taught, but is something that is that is drawn out from, abstracted, from the the instantiation of triangularity in the triangles we see.

Commonalities are of two kinds: univocal and analogical. It is important to distinguish the two forms of intellection that come from the two forms of commonalities we see in things.

Univocal commonalities are intellected "apart from the differences of the individual instances." We distill out the differences, concentrate on the sameness, and it is the sameness thus abstracted from any individual differences that becomes the shared commonality. The differences are left outside. Only the similarity between objects is allowed in the door of the mind. Thus, in univocal notion of triangularity, we ignore the fact that one of our triangles is an isosceles triangle, one is a left-handed right-angled triangle, and the other a right-handed right-angled triangle.

Univocal Reasoning: Sameness without Differences

Not all intellected commonalities are of this kind. There is a kind of intellection that is analogical,* where the commonalities are intellected without excluding the differences in their instantiation. The entire analogate or individual instance is invited in the door of the mind, and the individual instances' differences help inform our understanding of the commonality or analogon.

Analogical Reasoning: Sameness with Difference

Dr. Knasas gave two examples of this sort of reasoning. Consider the two Lithuanian cities of Vilnius and Kaunas.** They may both be called "charming cities," and yet they are palpably different even while sharing the commonality of "charming cities."

Kaunas and Vilnius are Charming Cities

Vilnius has winding and crooked streets. Kaunus, on the other hand, straight and orderly streets. Yet withal they are both charming cities in spite of the differences in the makeup of their streets. To understand the sameness in Vilnius and in Kaunas, therefore, one begins by focusing on the differences. "The sameness lies in the differences." In this instance, the city of Kaunus and the city of Vilnius are called analogates, and the commonality they share, that of "charming cities," is called the analogous concept or analogon. What is striking about this sort of reasoning is that the more instances one has of analogates, the more one understands the analogon. It is not like univocal commonality where, once seized it is essentially completely grasped. Analogous concepts, while less precise than univocal concepts, are infinitely richer. They are almost inexhaustible. There is, therefore, a certain bitter-sweetness in analogical thinking because analogical concepts can only be grasped through individual instances, through analogates, and so they are never fully and completely learned. As we gather up our knowledge through understanding analogates, we are also aware that we never fully exhaust the concept. This is even more true when we speak about analogons that involve the transcendentals such as being and the good.

Another instance of analogous commonality would be the notion of "great baseball players." The analogon "great ball players" contains such diverse greats such as the Jewish left-handed pitcher for the Brooklyn/Los Angeles Dodgers, Sandy Koufax, or the great African-American right-handed hitter and outfielder for the New York Giants, Willie Mays. In order to understand the analogon we need to invite all of their diversities. We learn, thereby, for example, that race, religion have nothing to do with being a great ball player. We learn that one can be a great ball player even though one's greatness comes from different tasks or roles that relate to the playing of the game of baseball. The more great ball players we have within the analogon great ball players, the more we learn about the commonality these ball players share.

Willie Mays and Sandy Koufax are Great Ballplayers

A further distinction in analogies can be made. This distinction is based upon how the analogates realize the analogon. Analogies are proportional if the analogon relates to the individual analogates independent of another analogate. If, however, one analogate refers to the analogon through another analogate, then one has an instance of analogy of proportion. The analogy of "charming cities" is proportional in that neither Vilnius nor Kaunas have to refer to each other to in realizing the analogon. The same is true for Koufax and Mays as analogates of the analogon of "great ball players." An example of an analogy of proportion would involve the notion of holiness. In the analogon "holiness" we would have Christ as the prime analogate. The saints would also be analogates, yet their holiness is completely dependent upon the holiness of the prime analogate, Christ. These secondary analogates--St. Francis of Assisi, St. Francis Xavier, St. Clare of Assisi, etc.--are dependent upon the prime analogate Christ. (Though not mentioned by Dr. Knasas, it would seem that if "Law" is the analogon, then Eternal Law would be the prime analogate, and the secondary analogates would be the Natural Law, and even tertiary analogates positive law, whether divine or human, and the Jewish ceremonial or judicial law.)

____________________________
*We have addressed the issue of analogy or analogical thinking in a number of prior posts, perhaps most technically in the posting entitled The Analogy of Law: From Law to Law.
**Dr. Knasas is of Lithuanian origin, and has taught at Universities there hence the choice of Lithuanian cities as examples.

Jacques Maritain and Natural Law: Natural Law, Analogically Speaking

“THE CONCEPT OF LAW," MARITAIN OBSERVES, "is an analogous concept." Its analogous characteristic relates to the great chain of law from human positive law, through natural law, through eternal law, into the very truth of God. Though each link in this "chain of law" is "law," there is an analogical relationship between them which must be grasped, or one will misunderstand the eternal law, the natural law, and one may sever necessary links in this great "chain of law" which follows the "chain of being."

The fundamental fact is that the law we are most familiar with is the written law of man, human positive law. So it is that human law that most clearly and familiarly fits into St. Thomas's definition of law. Law, says St. Thomas in his Summa Theologiae, "is nothing else than an ordinance of reason for the common good, made by him who has care of the community, and promulgated." S. T. Iª-IIae q. 90 a. 4 co. (nihil est aliud quam quaedam rationis ordinatio ad bonum commune, ab eo qui curam communitatis habet, promulgata.) But human law is not the only law that exists, though it may be the law with which we are most familiar.

It should be noted . . . that the very word "law" risks being misunderstood because the most obvious and the most immediate notion that we have of law is that of written law or positive law: consequently, if we overlook the analogical character of the notion of law, we run the risk of conceiving Natural Law and every species of law after the pattern of law best known to us--the written law.

Maritain, 44. To maintain that human written law is the paradigmatic form of law would be a massive mistake, because the ideal, the paradigm of law is not human law, but the eternal law, and subsequent to that the natural law. The eternal law and the natural law--and not human law--are more fundamental and pure forms of law than human law. And there are huge distinctions between these laws, most notably in the knowledge of the law and the means of promulgation of that law.

Some of these differences are pointed out by Maritain. For example, the analogical character of law is illuminated in the notion of Eternal Law. Contrary to written law, the "Eternal law is not written upon paper; it is promulgated in the divine intellect and is known in itself solely to God and by those who see him in his essence." Maritain, 45. This means, of course, that contrary to human law, Eternal Law in its fullness is, at least in this life, unknown to us and unknowable by us by natural means. "The Eternal Law is as infinitely distant from written or human law as the divine essence is from created being." Maritain, 45. And yet, as rational creatures, were know "a certain reflection" of the Eternal Law insofar as we know the truth. "For all knowledge of truth is a sort of reflection of and participation in the Eternal Law, which is the unchangeable truth." Maritain, 45 (quoting S. T. Iª-IIae q. 93 a. 2 co. "Omnis enim cognitio veritatis est quaedam irradiatio et participatio legis aeternae, quae est veritas incommutabilis.")

This analogous character of law is also reflected in natural law, which is distinguished from human, written law by its unwritten nature and its means of promulgation. Natural law is defined thus:

Natural Law is an order [of reason] based in nature, or required appropriately by human nature, whose regulations are naturally known by man--naturally, which is to say, through the inclinations by means of which the rational creature participates in the divine [i.e., eternal] law.

Maritain, 45.*

Importantly, the order of reason concerned with is not the order of reason in nature separate and independent from God. The order of reason that is behind the natural law is that of the author of nature, God. That is why it is a huge mistake, a massive blunder, to separate God and the Eternal Law from the natural law, as was done in the 16th Century, most notably by the likes of Hugo Grotius (1583-1645) and his successors who took his cue. Grotius famously wrote that the natural law would remain valid, would bind, even if, one, in a most wicked proposition, assumed that God did not exist.** Thus the corpse of natural law should be obeyed, in Grotius's view, even though the head of the eternal law be lopped off. This was a "rationalistic deformation of the concept of Natural Law." Maritain, 46.

And, of course, this turned out to be horribly false argument. If the reason in the natural law is not divine reason, but nature's "reason" independent of God, then by what authority does an impersonal nature bind man? Nature cannot be presupposed, absent its creator, to be reasonable. Nature itself has thus no power to oblige. When thinkers, following Grotius's lead, severed God from nature, and concentrated "solely upon the order of nature--as deciphered by human reason--and did not perceive the relationship between the order of nature and the eternal reason," the enterprise was bound to fail. It was bound to fail because nature--bereft of eternal reason to give it its "ought"--is merely fact, merely is an "is," and there is no "ought" to be found in it. Thus severing the divine reason from nature naturally led to Hume's famous destruction of natural law without the eternal law, the so-called "Hume's Guillotine," or the "naturalistic fallacy," or the "Is-Ought problem."*** What Hume destroyed with his famous naturalistic fallacy argument was not a living natural law theory, but a natural law theory already decapitated by Hugo Grotius. Hume, who claimed to kill the natural law, was but stabbing a headless corpse and claiming victory, no real great feat of intellectual prowess. As Maritain summarizes it:

Suppose, absurdly, that God does not exist and that nothing is changed in things [i.e., let us suppose everything remains as it is]: then, by hypothesis, nature would continue to exist, and consequently the normality of functioning of human nature; the requirements of the ideal order based upon the essence of man would likewise continue to exist. But a second question presents itself: is this order rational, is it wise, does it oblige me in conscience? Indeed, the only foundation for its rationality is the Eternal Law, the divine reason, and it is precisely this which Grotius did not perceive.
. . . .
[W]hy should I be obliged in conscience by a purely factual order? In reality if God does not exist, the Natural Law lacks obligatory power. If the Natural Law does not involve the divine reason, it is not law, and if it is not law, it does not oblige.

Maritain, 46. In short, if God does not exist, if the natural law does not involve divine reason, it is not law.**** It has no "ought," and only is an "is," and the atheist Hume is absolutely and totally correct in criticizing someone who jumps from a mere "is" to an "ought." And we are orphans without law. The laws would all be flat. And the exchange between More and Roper in Bolt's "A Man for All Seasons" may be heightened and paraphrased to its metaphysical proportions: "Oh? And when the last natural law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Grotius and Hume, the laws all being flat?"

Indeed, where would we hide if there were no right, no law, no truth and only might makes right? A law without eternal law, without right, reason, or truth is an abomination of law, it is to make law an idol, to render law desolate. Then let those that are in Judaea, that is those faithful of Israel, flee into the mountains (cf. Matt. 24:16), let no one go into their homes or their fields, and woe for pregnant women and nursing mothers, for the law, and the human power that has usurped law, will have no mercy on private property, labor, and human life if it finds it inconvenient.

________________________________
*I have added the content in brackets for clarity.
**Hugonis Grotii, De jure belli et pacis libri tres (Oxford 1913) (reproduction of 1646 edition), Prolegomena: "Et haec quidem quae jam diximus, locum aliquem haberent etiamsi daremus, quod summo scelere dari nequit, non esse Deum, aut non curari abe eo negotia humana." Translated, these famous words are: "And that which we have been saying would have a degree of validity even if we should dare to concede that which cannot be conceded without utmost wickedness, that there is no God."
***For a short discussion on this, see Ecstasis and Telos: David Hume and "Feelings, Nothing More Than Feelings . . . "
****The same should be said for "human rights." If these do not find their ultimate source in divine reason, in the eternal law, there is no reason except convenience for the strong to recognize them. Unmoored from the eternal law, human rights become unmoored from reason, and so we have people clamoring for such irrational, unnatural, and repugnant "rights" such as homosexual marriage or abortion.

From Law to Law: De Legis ad Lege

THE WORD "LAW" DOES NOT CUT LIKE A KNIFE, and does not handle lightly, precisely. It is a blunt, broad, heavy word with a significant depth and breadth of meaning, and it is easy to get lost in a thicket if we forget that the word "law" has rich analogical meaning and varied conventional use. The context where the term is used (at least in English) is truly daunting: a "law" of physics (say, a "law" of thermodynamics or the "law" of gravity), to mathematics (one may mention the commutative, distributive, associative "laws"), to economics (e.g., the "law" of supply and demand), to the laws of human communities (the "law of the land"), to authority ("Stop! In the name of the Law!"), to moral behavior (the natural "law"), to religious, revealed law (the "Law" of Moses, the "Law" of Grace). We even attribute laws to bad luck: Murphy's "law." Except for perhaps its use with respect to Murphy (where the use of "law" is metaphorical), the uses of the word "law" in these various instances are clearly are certainly not used univocally, but neither are they used entirely equivocally. Their relationship is analogical. "The analogy involved is that of proper proportionality, it is not a metaphorical analogy, and it is not analogy of attribution." Simon, 110. [For discussion on analogy, see The Analogy of Law: From Law to Law.] Thus, we have the situation where there is a proportion of a proportion. In mathematical relationships, the proportionality analogy may be depicted thus:

The proportionality analogy may be applied mutatis mutandis to conceptual relationships, so that there may be an analogy of proportionality between human law and human society and the natural law and mankind, or even the eternal law and the cosmos.

The analogy of proportion may be extended even further, so that the relationship between the various elements of positive law that we have studied, say the requirement that the law be a rule of reason, or for the common good, or supported by sanctions, or promulgated by the one that has responsibility for the community have analogical relationships with the natural law. As a result, we may say that the natural law is also a rule of reason, for the common good of mankind, supported by sanctions, and promulgated by the one who is responsible for mankind. For example, the relationship between a human legislator and the positive law may, by analogy of proportionality, be extended to explain the relationship between God and the natural law.

Having defined the positive law and identified its various components, and aware of the analogical use of the term law, we may then ask ourselves "whether the understanding of the positive law leads rationally to an antecedent, to a more profound or universal law, which we might call the 'law of nature'." Simon, 111. In answering this question, Simon asks three further questions. First, what is it that is meant when one asks whether a human positive law is just or unjust? Second, on what grounds is it that we conclude that a positive law ought to be changed? Third, why should positive human law be obeyed? Through the use of these three questions, Simon concludes that there is a law underlying human positive law so that "nothing would be right by [human] enactment if some things were not right by nature." Simon, 118. In short, human law presupposes a natural law, or human law makes no sense.

On the question of whether a human law may be just or unjust, men are almost unanimous that human laws can be just and that human laws can be unjust. In the extremes we may find doubters, so that anarchists would believe any human law is, by definition, unjust. At the other extreme, we may find inveterate positivists that would maintain that it is meaningless to mix terms like "justice," which is a term of value, with a term like "law," which is a term of fact.

But the extremists are not consistent with their ideologies, however sincere they may hold them. One wonders, for example, if Anarchist groups do not have organizational rules to handle their operations and governance. And they would be the first to invoke the laws protecting free speech if governments made efforts to squelch them. And even the most stubborn positivist, unless he were a Nazi supporter and blinded by its ideology, would admit that the laws against non-Aryans in Nazi Germany would be unjust. "The problem of injustice certainly exists with regard to every positive law." Simon, 113. Indeed, the question as to one law (and its justice or injustice) may be framed so as to encompass an entire political system. As a matter of unanimous practice, men discuss the justice of laws and of political systems, a practice which implies a notion of an extra-legal or extra-political standard. By further implication, this extra-legal or extra-political standard suggests an end or a purpose of law or of political systems.

The second question--when and on what grounds ought a positive law be changed?--in one way is already answered by the first question. A law ought to be changed on the grounds that it is just to change it, or at least not unjust to change it. (In fact, the question is asked when the law is passed in the first place.) This clearly suggests, again, and extra-legal standard, a natural law underlying all positive law. The difficulty of discovering its particulars does not justify refusing to acknowledge its existence.

This brings us to the last question. Why should human law be obeyed? "If there is no idea of an antecedent law," Simon observes, "the reason why positive law should be obeyed is entirely contained in the constraint possessed by civil society." Simon, 116. In other words, law would have no claim on the conscience, but would be obeyed only to avoid the sanctions that the state could impose upon us. Obedience to law would based upon reasons entirely pragmatic. In other words, the motive for obedience to law would be reduced "completely and in all cases, to a desire to avoid the trouble which would follow if the law was disobeyed." This may be often a motive. But can it be the only motive all the time? Is this sufficient grounds for justifying obedience in all cases? Simon thinks not. Most fundamentally, if one were to accept the argument that obedience to human law is in all cases justified by avoidance of sanction or inconvenience, then we are really voiding men from any obligation toward the positive law, and instead basing the relationship between positive law and men "in sheer power." Simon, 116. With respect to this, Simon observes:

There is an almost universal reluctance to interpret the obligation to obey positive law in terms which annihilate it and replace it by a system of physical constraints where there is no choice, no freedom, and no morality. The obligation to obey positive law obviously requires a different interpretation and this must be derived from the definition of positive law.

And that definition of positive law includes references to an extra-legal standard. In this case, the legal standards are in the definition: reason, for the common good, etc. Others may be further implied. What it suggests, even if simply by inclination, is that there is an extra-legal justification, one other than sheer power, that would make human law something that ought, if just, if ordered to the common good and predicated upon reason, to be obeyed, even if it results in inconvenience to ourselves.

So Simon concludes:

To sum up. No one could maintain with any appearance of consistency that it makes no sense to ask whether a law is just or unjust. And if we confess that the question makes sense, we also confess that there is a justice anterior to human enactment, that prior to their being just by reason of enactment some things are just by nature. These considerations also explain why a law happens to be changed. Finally, to say law should be obeyed exclusively because of the trouble which somewhat regularly follows upon the breaking of law is dialectically impossible. Men have never reasoned that way. When a society is in such a condition that its laws are obeyed only insofar as there is real danger of being caught and punished, it has already disintegrated and even the fear of punishment cannot do much to hold it together.

Simon, 117-18.

On the last observation by Yves Simon, we may wonder if we have not already reached the point of social disintegration.

The Analogy of Law: From Law to Law

DEUM NEMO VIDIT, no man has seen God, the Apostle John, that favorite of Jesus, said in his first epistle (1 John 4:12). It follows that no one has seen the Divine Promulgator of the natural law. Nor has anyone seen the natural law. The natural law is not writ on tablets of stone, nor inscribed upon golden tablets, nor painted on scrolls nor scratched on sheaves of parchment, and so no one has seen the natural law writ in any visible media. How, then, not having seen either the Divine Legislator or a "Natural Law Code" can we say such a thing exists?

Like any natural theology, our knowledge of God begins with our senses, with what we are able to detect about the world around us. This is what is closest to us in a psychological and pedagogical sense. The world and our senses as the inform our minds are the bases of all our knowledge, and from the created order and our comprehension of it we are able to work backwards, as it were, to the uncreated God. The Invisible is known from the visible, the Uncreated from the created world, "being understood by the things that are made" (Rom. 1:20), so from creation God's power and divinity may be known.

In the area of the natural law, it is no different. We begin with our experience of the ordering of the cosmos and of the ordering of civil society through human law. These we know. We know the legislators who have promulgated that law. We know where they may found. We know that judges use (or should use) these laws in the fashioning of their decisions. We know that they exist, that they govern a society, that they are based upon the will of the legislator and upon some sort of reason and, at least in theory, for the common good. Thus it is that "the law of society comes before the law of nature in a psychological and pedagogical sense." Simon, 69. Human law is our visible springboard, as it were, to the invisible, the hidden natural law. But we ought not presume that the word "law" is understood univocally when used of human law and when used of natural law. We must be aware that the word "law" may be used analogically:

[W]e cannot presume that the concept of law applies in the same senses to the laws of society and to natural laws. The term law, as predicated of the laws of the state and the laws of nature, may convey not one meaning but a set of relate meanings; briefly, it may be analogical.

Simon, 69. In the comparison of two objects, the relationship of analogy merits some more extensive treatment, as it is a middling concept, one between univocity and equivocity. ("Et iste modus communitatis medius est inter puram aequivocationem et simplicem univocationem." ST, Ia, q. 13, a. 5, c.) Supposing two objects (x, y), we may want to know their relationship. They may both be red in color (perhaps two red apples). X is a red apple. Y is a red apple. The term "red apple" (or for that matter, "red" and "apple") is predicated of both x and y univocally, that is, in the exact same sense, unequivocally. The term "red apple" for both x and y involve the same res significata, they signify the same thing. The term "red apple" has a certain ratio propria, and the two objects share both the term "red apple" and the ratio propria relating to the term "red apple."

The same predicate may be said of two objects in an entirely equivocal sense. Suppose x is the "leaf" on a tree. Suppose that y is the "leaf" of a table. The term "leaf" is used equivocally. It has an entirely unrelated meaning when applied to x than when applied to y. There is no relationship between x and y despite the fact that they are both leaves. In an equivocal use of terms, the terms involve different res significatae, different things are signified. McInerny gives a multiple example of equivocal uses of the word "ball."

Cinderella, dancing on the balls of her feet at the ball, was having a ball until she slipped on a ball.

McInerny, 90. In each instant, the term "ball" is used equivocally. There is no real shared meaning between each use of the word "ball."


Two objects, however, may share predicates that are in some ways equivocal and in some ways unequivocal. In such contexts, the predicate is used in an analogical way. That is, the common name between them has the same res significata, but it is signified in different ways in each of the objects. McInerny, 104. Understanding the analogical use of words is important, particularly in discussing matters pertaining to God where words cannot be predicated univocally of God when comparing him to things of creation (since he differs substantially from creation), but they cannot be said to be entirely equivocal (or else we would not know God at all, or at least we would not be able to express any truths about God). As E. M. Macierowski puts it:

[I]f the created names that we apply to God are univocal, the divine transcendence is annihilated; if they are equivocal, our language is vain and we have to give up knowing God. Here again analogy must intervene to escape these two extremes.

Macierowski, 13.

St. Louis by El Greco

Thus, when we say that God is "just," and that St. Louis was "just," we do not use the term "just" univocally of God and St. Louis. God's justice is far above St. Louis's justice, as good as St. Louis's justice may have been. Yet neither are God's justice and St. Louis's justice unrelated or equivocal. In some ways, St. Louis's justness participates or shares similarities to God's justness, and in some ways God's justness is similar or alike to St. Louis's justness. That is, the predicate "just" is used analogically when used of both God and St. Louis. This is how the word "law" is used when predicated of eternal law or natural law and when predicated of human law. The word law in reference to the eternal law or the natural law is neither used univocally, nor used equivocally, but analogically.

Since analogy uses terms in a non-univocal sense, an analogy, though it involves the same term, involves a plurality of meanings (rationes). There is, however, a common thread in the use of analogy, and there is a certain ordering, an order per prius et posterius, among the rationes or meanings of the same term, some being closer to the primary meaning or the ratio propria which is the form or perfection they all refer to. McInerny, 104.

We can say that the analogous name signifies a plurality or rationes which are related per prius et posterius; that is, one ratio is primary and presupposed by the others, this being revealed by the fact that the first ratio enters into the others. These secondary rationes signify diverse proportions or analogies to the first; they are said per respectum ad unum.

McInerny, 98. The term (word) is simply a way of signifying (modus significandi) a particular form or perfection (res significata). The term or word, when used analogously, has at least two but often a plurality of rationes. Each ratio, however, signifies the same form or perfection (the res significata), but it does so in a different way. The form or the perfection signified by the word or term is the id a quo nomen imponitur ad significandum, that particular thing which is the term or word has, by convention, been picked to designate. McInerny, 99.

Analogous names thus have the same res significata and diverse modi significandi. Each ratio involves both the res significata and a way of signifying it. The ratio propria is not the res significata, but the primary and controlling way of signifying the res significata. . . . We see now the precise meaning of saying that the many rationes of the analogous name are partly the same and partly different. They are the same as to the res significata; they differ as to the modi significandi.

McInerny, 99.

The analogous use of terms is generally divided into two kinds: terms used plurium ad unum and terms used unius ad alterum. McInerny, 102-03. The analogy unius ad alterum may be further subdivided into analogy of proportion and analogy of proportionality. McInerny, 113. The analogy of proportion is one where the objects have a particular relation between them. The analogy of proportionality is when the objects are not related through proportion, but rather a similarity of two proportions to one another.

Going back to the distinction between analogy plurium ad unum and analogy unius ad alterum. The latter exists when the terms are used of two or more objects with reference to another object. The former is in play when the the term is used of one object with reference to its use in another object. Thus we may say that a judgment is just and a judge is just. The term "just" is used analogically plurium ad unum, since the term just points to another object, namely God who is all just. On the other hand, if we use the term healthy to refer to medicine prescribed by a veterinarian to cure an animal and an animal, the analogy is unius ad alterum, since the term healthy as predicated of medicine prescribed by a veterinarian refers to the healthy animal. There is no reference to something other than the two objects compared with the same term. When analogy is used of God, it always has to be in the sense of unius ad alterum, as there is nothing other than creation and God. And when a term is used of a creature and applied eminently of God, there is no third to which the analogy can refer. McInerny, 111.

Once having hinted that the term "law" predicated of human or civil law and of the natural law may involve analogy, Simon turns to his definition of human law. That will be addressed in our next post.

_________________________________

McInerny refers to Ralph McInerny, Aquinas and Analogy (Washington, D.C., Catholic University of America, 1996).

Macierowski refers to Bernard Montagnes, The Doctrine of the Analogy of Being According to Thomas Aquinas (E. M. Macierowski, trans.) (Marquette University Press, 2004)