Medieval Philosophy and Theology 11 (2003), 241–260. Printed in the United States of America. Copyright C© 2005 Cambridge University Press 1057-0608 DOI: 10.1017.S1057060804000118 Analogy, Semantics, and Hermeneutics: The "Concept versus Judgment" Critique of Cajetan's De Nominum Analogia JOSHUA P. HOCHSCHILD Wheaton College I. INTRODUCTION Cajetan's treatment of analogy in De Nominum Analogia is well known as the most influential and sophisticated theory of a central issue in Thomistic philosophy. The late twentieth century saw that theory subject to a family of criticisms. If the critics are correct, Cajetan's analogy theory is also significant historically for exposing weaknesses latent in medieval semantic assumptions. According to the critics, the Aristotelian assumptions that words signify by means of discrete "concepts," and that the meaning of propositions depends on the significations of its component terms, cannot do justice to the complexity, variety, and flexibility of actual human discourse; in De Nominum Analogia they see the elegant structure of classical semantics collapsing under the pressure of analogical language. In this article, I examine these criticisms of Cajetan's analogy theory, and argue that, in light of both Cajetan's semantic principles and his hermeneutic practice, they fall short. The conclusion not only implies a defense of Cajetan's project, but clarifies the general philosophical alternatives available within the traditional Aristotelian semantic framework. II. CRITICISM OF A SEMANTIC ANALYSIS OF ANALOGY Ashworth and Ross: The Limits of Classical Semantics Although especially relevant in its applications in metaphysics and theology, analogy was considered by medieval philosophers to be a common feature of language and thought, and so was addressed in connection with general discussions of logic. Considered to be a mean between univocation and equivocation, it tended to be discussed in connection with Aristotle's treatment 241 242 JOSHUA P. HOCHSCHILD of the properties of terms at the beginning of the Categories. As a matter of the semantics of terms, then, analogy was analyzed by medieval thinkers in accordance with two roughly Aristotelian semantic assumptions: (1) that the meaning of a proposition depends on the meaning of its component terms, and (2) that the meaning of a term is a nature signified (and understood) by means of a "concept" or simple act of intellectual apprehension. On these assumptions, a term is univocal in different sentential contexts if, in the different contexts, the same term signifies the same nature by means of the same intellectual act of conception; and a term is equivocal in different sentential contexts if, in the different contexts, the same term signifies different natures by means of different acts of conception. Analogy, as a mean between univocation and equivocation, must involve the same term in different contexts signifying a nature (or natures) partly one and partly many, by means of concepts (or a concept) in some sense the same and in some sense different. This of course raises interesting questions. How can there be a mean between one nature and many? How can the act (or acts) of conception, by virtue of which that nature (or those natures) are signified and understood, be somehow the same and somehow different? Although context is valuable for determining whether a particular term exhibits univocity, equivocity, and/or analogy on individual occasions of utterance, answering these questions and developing a general theory of the nature of analogical signification seems to be primarily a matter of analyzing the semantics of terms. Indeed, the general theoretical semantic questions raised about analogy as a mean between univocity and equivocity can be addressed completely independently of, and indeed would be unaffected by, attention to the actual context of particular utterances of analogous terms. This accounts for the phenomenon, noted by E. J. Ashworth, that "medieval logicians . . . discussed analogy and equivocation as if they were properties of single terms, as if neither sentential context nor speaker use and intention were at issue."1 Of course, the semantic phenomenon of analogy only manifests itself in the context of different propositions, and it does not seem as if an analysis of isolated terms can entirely explain the fact that human language exhibits the flexibility that it does. According to Ashworth, 1. E. J. Ashworth, "Equivocation and Analogy in Fourteenth Century Logic: Ockham, Burley, and Buridan," in Historia Philosophiae Medii Aevi: Studien zur Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters, ed. Burkhard Mojsisch and Olaf Pluta, 2 vols. (Amsterdam: B. R. Gruner, 1991), 1:28. Ashworth makes similar observations in Ashworth, "Signification and Modes of Signifying in Thirteenth-Century Logic: A Preface to Aquinas on Analogy," Medieval Philosophy and Theology 1 (1991): 45– 46; Ashworth, "Analogy and Equivocation in Thirteenth-Century Logic: Aquinas in Context," Mediaeval Studies 54 (1992): 107; and Ashworth, "Language, Renaissance Philosophy of," in The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, in which she writes that in the period she considers "there was littled discussion in logic texts of how words relate to each other in propositional contexts." ANALOGY, SEMANTICS, AND HERMENEUTICS IN CAJETAN 243 however, this indicates a weakness of medieval semantic assumptions, insofar as they made it difficult to analyze analogy in any other way. Paying more attention to "contextual clues," Ashworth writes, "would have required a completely different approach to language than was found in thirteenth and fourteenth century logic texts."2 In another article, Ashworth writes that medieval logicians inherited and passed on "a theory of language that tends to take words as units, endowed both with their signification and their modi significandi before they enter sentences and independently of speaker intention on any given occasion." She continues: One might think that equivocal and analogical terms are precisely those whose functioning is best explained through context and use, but . . . there was a tendency to speak as if equivocal and analogical terms formed special classes that could be identified in advance of use. To the extent that Aquinas's doctrine of analogy is embedded in such a general theory, one may fear that it will share the theory's defects.3 Elsewhere, Ashworth makes similar observations that potentially "cast doubt on the viability of the whole enterprise" of medieval discussions of analogy: The theory of analogy as presented by medieval philosophers is . . . gravely affected by the belief that each word is endowed with its signification, including its grammatical features or consignification, as a unity. Such an assumption is not easy to reconcile with the thought that language is flexible, and that one and the same word can have different shades of meaning.4 Later, Ashworth is willing to put the matter in even stronger terms. Writing about some fourteenth-century logicians, she summarizes one significant "result" of her findings: [T]he burden of analogy cannot be carried by single words or single concepts. A term cannot be used to express priority and posteriority and attribution, and yet these notions are expressed in language. The obvious solution is to give up the attempt to categorize terms as equivocal, univocal, or analogical, and to look instead at how they behave in different contexts and in relation to different sentential structures. 2. Ashworth, "Equivocation and Analogy in Fourteenth Century Logic," pp. 42– 43. 3. Ashworth, "Signification and Modes of Signifying in Thirteenth-Century Logic," p. 67. 4. Ashworth, "Analogical Concepts: The Fourteenth Century Background to Cajetan," Dialogue 31 (1992): 400. 244 JOSHUA P. HOCHSCHILD Unfortunately, this solution seems to have been incompatible with medieval approaches to language.5 Ashworth voices this criticism-that medieval semantic assumptions limited medieval philosophers from properly handling the phenomenon of analogy-somewhat more tentatively than James F. Ross, whose Portraying Analogy she occasionally cites.6 Ross's book begins with severe criticism of "classical" approaches to analogy, including Cajetan's. Ross note that the key assumptions and metaphors of the classical story about analogy were exhausted, as far as fruitful theoretical elaboration is concerned, by the time Cajetan produced De Nominum Analogia in 1498, the last systematic explanation of analogy of meaning since the middle ages.7 What Ross here calls the "key assumptions . . . of the classical story" constitute the basic framework of traditional Aristotelian logic. Thus Ross says that "the classical theory [of analogy] suffers from limitations of scope and perspective," and furthermore that it is "based on false premises." Among the allegedly false premises are the two we already mentioned, which we could name, respectively, the conceptualist and the compositionalist assumptions: "that word meanings are ideas- (concepts-, thoughts-) in-the-mind-signifiedby-conventional-sounds," and "that sentence meaning is the molecular sum (syncategorematically computed) of the atomic meanings of the component words."8 Ross does little in Portraying Analogy to explain the suspect "classical" premises, to show that they are indeed "classical," or to formulate any particular criticisms of them.9 But, his charges are shared implicitly and explicitly by others, and, on the face of it, the two premises criticized by Ross do seem to be assumptions Cajetan makes in De Nominum Analogia. Cajetan's explicit project is to explain the character of the unity of the concepts signified by analogous terms, hoping to explain both the nature of true predication and the possibility of valid inferences that contain such terms. If the Aristotelian compositionalist and conceptualist semantic assumptions underlying this project are false, that is ipso facto an indictment of Cajetan's theory of analogy. 5. E. J. Ashworth, "Analogy, Univocation, and Equivocation in Some Early Fourteenth Century Authors," in Aristotle in Britain During the Middle Ages, ed. John Marenbon (Brepols Turnhout, 1996), pp. 246–47. 6. James F. Ross, Portraying Analogy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981). 7. Ross, Portraying Analogy, p. ix. 8. Ross, Portraying Analogy, p. ix. 9. Similar critical observations are also made in a review of Ross's book by Josef Stern, The Journal of Philosophy 84 (1987): 392–97. ANALOGY, SEMANTICS, AND HERMENEUTICS IN CAJETAN 245 Gilson's "Concept versus Judgment" Criticism This is also an indictment of anyone else who would theorize about analogy within the framework of Aristotelian semantic assumptions. As such, this criticism could implicate Aquinas as easily as Cajetan, as is already acknowledged in one of the above quotations from Ashworth. This is why some partisans of Aquinas have taken comfort in the fact that Aquinas never ventured an explicit semantic analysis of analogical signification on the order of Cajetan's. That Aquinas's writings on analogy are restricted to limited remarks on the occasions of particular philosophical or theological difficulties, with no systematic formal analysis, is taken by some to be evidence of Aquinas's greater sensitivity to the analogy phenomenon. Even if, as Ashworth suggests, Thomas might have shared the basic semantic assumptions of the medieval logical tradition, he never attempted their exhaustive application to explain analogical signification. This suggests a connection between the explicit criticism of a semantic analysis of analogy and another criticism of Cajetan-that his theory of analogy is unduly preoccupied with "concepts" as opposed to "judgment." Thomistic scholar Armand Maurer represents the views of many when he notes that It is not generally realized that St. Thomas' doctrine of analogy is above all a doctrine of the judgment of analogy, and not of the analogy of concept-at least if we mean by "concept" the expression of an act of simple apprehension.10 Elsewhere Maurer elaborates on this point, making it a specific criticism of Cajetan and relating it to a charge of inappropriate Scotistic influence on Cajetan's doctrine: Cajetan's treatise On the Analogy of Names is an attempt to put into order the Thomistic notion of analogy. Whereas in St. Thomas' writings analogy is used with great suppleness and flexibility as a means of approaching God, who is unknown in His essence, Cajetan proposes a rigid classification of the types of analogy that excludes all but the analogy of proper (or non-metaphorical) proportionality as the true metaphysical analogy. Throughout his treatment of analogy he tends to leave out of consideration the central notion of esse and to conceive of analogy in terms of concepts rather than judgment. In both regards he resembles the Scotists against whom he argued.11 10. Armand Maurer, "St. Thomas and the Analogy of Genus," The New Scholasticism 29 (1955): 143. Maurer's claims are considered in Michael P. Slattery, "Concerning Two Recent Studies in Analogy," The New Scholasticism 31 (1957): 237–46. 11. Armand Maurer, Medieval Philosophy, 2d ed. (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1982), p. 351. 246 JOSHUA P. HOCHSCHILD Maurer is not alone in his evaluation of Cajetan's strategy. Patrick Sherry has criticized Cajetan's decision "to devote a disproportionate amount of time explaining how there can be a single analogical concept." Anticipating Ross's strategy, he concludes: We can avoid such contortions, I think, if we make a radical break with the tendency to view concepts as psychological entities and instead approach the matter by examining the truth conditions of judgments [that involve analogy].12 The recurrent contrast of the role of concepts with the role of judgment in analogy can be traced back to Étienne Gilson. According to Gilson: The Thomist doctrine of analogy is above all a doctrine of the judgment of analogy. It is in fact thanks to judgment of proportion that, without a change of nature, one can make of the concept a usage sometimes equivocal, sometimes analogical, sometimes univocal. . . The analogy of which Duns Scotus thinks is much more an analogy of concept. For, on the level of the concept and of representation, analogy is practically confused with likeness. It is no longer a matter of knowing whether two terms play an analogous role in a judgment of proportion, but whether the concept designated by one term is or is not the same as the concept designated by the other.13 12. Patrick J. Sherry, "Analogy Today," Philosophy 51 (1976): 443. 13. Étienne Gilson, Jean Duns Scot: Introduction à ses Positions Fondamentales (Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 1952), 101–2: La doctrine thomiste de l'analogie est avant tout une doctrine du jugement d'analogie. C'est en effet grâce au jugement de proportion que, sans en altérer la nature, on peut faire du concept un usage tantôt équivoque, tantôt analogique, tantôt univoque. . . . L'analogie à laquelle pense Duns Scot est beaucoup plutôt une analogie du concept. Or, sur le plan du concept et de la représentation, l'analogie se confond pratiquement avec la ressemblance. Il ne s'agit plus alors de savoir si deux terms jouent un rôle analogue dans un jugement de proportion, mais si le concept désigné par un terme est ou n'est pas le même que le concept désigné par l'autre. Gilson advances this interpretation of Thomistic analogy in terms of judgment vs. concepts elsewhere as well: Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, trans. L. K. Shook (New York: Random House, 1956), pp. 106–9. Gilson, Le Thomisme, Introduction a la philosophie de Saint Thomas d'Aquin, 5th ed. (Paris: Vrin, 1944): "Sur le plan du concept, il n'y a pas de milieu entre l'univoque et l'equivoque" (p. 155; the word "concept" is translated as "quiddity" in Shook's English translation). See also Gilson, Being and Some Philosophers, 2d ed. (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1952), pp. 190–215. ANALOGY, SEMANTICS, AND HERMENEUTICS IN CAJETAN 247 Gilson's interpretation of Thomistic analogy, with its implicit criticism of Cajetan's concern to characterize the analogical concept, has had wide influence.14 David Burrell has perhaps given it the most extensive elaboration. According to Burrell: Whoever understands that analogy is to be explicated "on the level of judgment" and not of concepts, Gilson contends, has also grasped the real divergence between Aquinas and Scotus. . . . Judgment is indispensable precisely because responsible analogous usage requires that we assess the way in which a term is being used in relation to its primary analogate.15 In Burrell's presentation, the connection between the charge that a concern with concepts is more Scotistic than Thomistic, and the charge that analogy is not fruitfully subjected to traditional semantic analysis, is especially clear. In his first book about analogy-with which his later writings about analogy have remained essentially consistent-Burrell explains that he wants to get away from "attempts . . . to collate the ways we use analogical expression into one theoretical mold."16 In a section on the "limits of formal analysis," Burrell considers some recent attempts to "salvage" Cajetan's "formal analysis":17 [F]ormal attempts to explain analogous usage seem self-defeating. They shunt from the formally correct but too narrowly stipulative to a more 14. In addition to those mentioned, Gilson's interpretation on this point is also followed by: George P. Klubertanz, St. Thomas Aquinas on Analogy: A Textual Analysis and Systematic Synthesis (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1960), p. 116 ("analogy is primarily an affair of judgment rather than concept"); Henri de Lubac, The Discovery of God, trans. Alexander Dru (New York: P. J. Kenedy and Sons, 1960), p. 201. See also E. L. Mascall, Existence and Analogy (London: Longmans, 1949), pp. 116–21 and Gregory Philip Rocca, Speaking the Incomprehensible God: Thomas Aquinas and the Interplay of Positive and Negative Theology (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 2004), esp. ch. 7. Battista Mondin has dissented from Gilson's interpretation, arguing for the the compatibility of judgment and concept. Mondin, The Principle of Analogy in Protestant and Catholic Theology, 2d ed. (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1968), pp. 58 n.2; 60 n.2. Rocca also admits the compatibility of emphasizing judgment and concept (pp. 165–73, 193, 195). 15. Burrell, "From Analogy of 'Being' to the Analogy of Being," in Recovering Nature: Essays in Natural Philosophy, Ethics and Metaphysics in Honor of Ralph P. McInerny, ed. Thomas Hibbs and John O'Callaghan (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1999), pp. 259–60. See also Burrell, Analogy and Philosophical Language (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1973), p. 204. 16. Burrell, Analogy and Philosophical Language, p. 5. 17. Burrell has in mind specifically Bochenski, "On Analogy," The Thomist (1948): 425–77, and James F. Ross, "Analogy as a Rule of Meaning for Religious Language," International Philosophical Quarterly 1 (1961): 468–502; the latter was written before Ross's own rejection of such approaches in Portraying Analogy. 248 JOSHUA P. HOCHSCHILD adequate but formally less acceptable scheme. The very recurrence of this pattern is revealing. Analogy, it seems, is closely linked to a purposive use of language. One of the serviceable features of analogous terms is their adaptability to diverse contexts. Yet the language we use to express our judgment about entire frameworks, and their adequacy to the more comprehensive purposes of inquiry, is also markedly analogical. Hence a formal characterization seems impossible in principle since formal logic constructs languages and tests their consistency but does not appraise them with respect to extralogical purposes.18 In the words of one commentator, Burrell wants, "in lieu of a theory about analogy, [to] establish his own thesis that paying close grammatical attention to the way analogous terms are actually used will demonstrate the freedom, fluidity, responsibility, and judgment actually involved in such usage."19 Burrell notes that he thinks Ross's Portraying Analogy actually cooperates with the work of Gilson and Lonergan and other scholars by whose efforts "Aquinas is justly liberated from a Thomistic rendition of 'abstraction' often more beholden to Scotus."20 Burrell elaborates: "Lonergan's account of concept-formation in Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas, for example, independently corroborated by Peter Geach, could offer the necessary bridge linking Aquinas' efforts with Ross' semantic sophistication."21 In a footnote, Burrell clarifies that he is speaking of "Peter Geach's observations in Mental Acts . . . regarding abstraction, together with Lonergan's comprehensive review of the matter in Verbum, explicitly designed to correct the vaguely Scotistic accounts which had paraded as standard Thomistic epistemology."22 Burrell can thus separate Aquinas from the "Thomist" tradition, which has been engaged in the problematic pursuit of a semantic analysis of analogy. It is Thomists such as Cajetan, but not Thomas Aquinas himself, who attempted to analyze analogical signification in terms of relations of concepts. In so doing, the "Thomist" tradition has inadvertently succumbed to Scotistic influence,23 necessarily resulting in philosophical confusion.24 18. David Burrell, Analogy and Philosophical Language, p. 15. 19. Philip A. Rolnick, Analogical Possibilities: How Words Refer to God (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1993), p. 101. 20. David Burrell, review of James F. Ross, Portraying Analogy, in New Scholasticism 59 (1985), 349. 21. Burrell. "Review," p. 347. 22. Burrell. "Review," p. 347 n.1. 23. Bernard Lonergan does seem to be under the specific impression that Cajetan's view of concepts has been unduly influenced by Scotus; see Bernard Lonergan, Verbum: Word and Idea in Aquinas, ed. David Burrell (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1967), p. 25 n.122. However, see Lonergan, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding, 3d ed. (New York: Philosophical Library, 1970), pp. 368–71. 24. See Michael McCanles, who has argued that "once . . . analogy is dealt with on the level of concepts, the pressure seems of necessity to push esse toward a univocal concept, as both Scotus and Ockham show. Cajetan's analogical concept ANALOGY, SEMANTICS, AND HERMENEUTICS IN CAJETAN 249 Burrell finds confirmation for this criticism of Cajetan in the treatment of analogy by Yves Simon. In his article, "On Order in Analogical Sets," Simon speaks of analogical terms as terms which signify "analogical sets," sets in which there is some kind of "order."25 Simon then considers in what sense a common meaning can be "abstracted" from the analogical set. Because there is an "irreducible plurality" in analogy, analogical unity resists abstraction in the proper sense. This is not always properly recognized, says Simon. Analogates are "partly different," but they are also "partly similar," and so given this similarity, it is tempting to assume that "in spite of it all, the meanings do have a common feature, albeit a very thin one, which survives the differences and makes it possible for a term, whose unity is but one of analogy, to play the role of a syllogistic term."26 But for Simon it is naive to assume that "some common feature will be disclosed" and abstracted from diverse analogates.27 Diverse analogates do have analogical unity; but, Simon says, this "unity is traced to an operation of the mind," an operation that is only a kind of partial abstraction.28 He continues by noting that, "Besides unqualified abstraction, which pertains to the univocal alone, there is such a thing as an analogical abstraction, although, in this expression, the adjective weakens the signification of the noun."29 Simon calls this "an abstraction by way of confusion. . . , an incomplete, weak, partial abstraction."30 Reiterating this sense of abstraction "by way of confusion," Simon says, "Analogical abstraction proceeds by 'fusing together' the members of a set. But such 'fusing together' involves assertions and negations that define priorities and posteriorities."31 cannot maintain its integrity" (McCanles, "Univocalism in Cajetan's Doctrine of Analogy," New Scholasticism 42 [1968]: 47). McCanles thus describes what he sees as the problem of a semantic analysis of analogy that makes reference to the analogical concept: "[Cajetan's] method of treating the problem is at odds with itself, and to a very large extent undercuts the very doctrine he is overtly trying to refine" (p. 19). Unfortunatley, McCanles's argument is complicated by a confusion; McCanles does not sufficiently distinguish the issue of analogical signification in general (which is Cajetan's main concern in De Nominum Analogia) from the metaphysical issue of describing "the analogy of being." 25. Simon, "On Order in Analogical Sets," in Philosopher at Work: Essays by Yves R. Simon, ed. Anthony O. Simon (Lanham, Md. Rowman and Littlefield, 1999), pp. 135–71; originally in New Scholasticism 34 (1960): 1–42. 26. Simon, "On Order in Analogical Sets," p. 140. 27. As an example of one tempted by this naive assumption: "The suggestion here proposed is that, in order to employ analogical predication . . . we must hold that any two entities standing in an analogical relation to each other . . . must have a minimum of one property in common" (Paul C. Hayner, "Analogical Predication," The Journal of Philosophy 55 [1958]: 860). 28. Simon, "On Order in Analogical Sets," p. 145. 29. Simon, "On Order in Analogical Sets," p. 143. 30. Simon, "On Order in Analogical Sets," p. 145, emphasis Simon's. 31. Simon, "On Order in Analogical Sets," p. 156. 250 JOSHUA P. HOCHSCHILD As Burrell puts it, this means that "the 'analogical concept' . . . is a halfway house," that "the 'analogous concept' points beyond itself to a series of judgments."32 For, according to Burrell, the analogical "abstraction" described by Simon "is in the order of judgment, not of apprehension."33 For Burrell, this confirms Gilson's point that a genuinely Thomistic understanding of analogy should emphasize judgment rather than concepts. Cajetan's search for the unity of the analogical concept is thus inherently flawed. Rather than speak of formal analysis of analogical concepts, according to Burrell, we must approach analogy by attention to the different ways that analogical terms are used.34 Summary Some of the above commentators could be criticized for the failing to keep separate the general issue of analogical signification on the one hand, and such specific issues as divine naming and "the metaphysical analogy of being" on the other hand.35 Yet, despite such areas of confusion, we can distill from these commentators the following rather straightforward criticism of Cajetan: "Signifying analogically" is not a property that terms have independently of their use in particular sentences. To recognize analogical signification requires judgment. Thus analogical signification cannot be considered apart from the particular linguistic circumstances in which it arises. A proper philosophical treatment of the phenomenon of analogical signification will not consider words independently of their context, independently of actual usage. This, however, is not Cajetan's strategy; his De Nominum Analogia is not about judgment and context, but about relations of concepts. Cajetan's attempt to characterize the analogical "concept" is evidence that he is concerned with abstracting the semantic properties of terms from the context of actual predications and inferences. That this strategy results in a strict classification of kinds of analogy, rather than a flexible and sensitive understanding of the varieties of analogous usage, is further evidence of its inadequacy. 32. Burrell, "A Note on Analogy," p. 226. 33. Burrell, "A Note on Analogy," p. 225; see also Burrell, Analogy and Philosophical Language, p. 203. 34. Burrell's emphasis on use is the most obvious manifestation of his (acknowledged) debt to Wittgenstein. See Burrell, Analogy and Philosophical Language, pp. 17, 122, 123. 35. Perhaps it could be argued that to insist on such a distinction is already to grant Cajetan too much, to separate analogy from the "context" of particular theological and metaphysical judgments. Nonetheless, the phenomenon of analogical signification does take place outside of theology and metaphysics. It is reasonable to insist on the logical distinction between considering the phenomenon of analogical signification in general, and considering particular terms, such as "being" or divine names, which can exhibit analogical signification. ANALOGY, SEMANTICS, AND HERMENEUTICS IN CAJETAN 251 III. REPLIES In response to this criticism, I want to consider three things: in particular (1) Cajetan's understanding of a "concept"; more generally, (2) the theoretical question of the compatibility of insights about the importance of interpretation, context, and judgment with a semantic analysis of terms; and finally (3) Cajetan's own practice of treating cases of analogical signification and his sensitivity to context and judgment. Cajetan's Notion of the "Concept" Cajetan's concern with "concepts" is accused of being Scotistic, rather than Thomistic. On one level, it must be granted that Cajetan's concern with concepts is the result of Scotus's influence. Basing some arguments on the premise that a concept that could preserve the validity of a syllogism must be univocal, Scotus and his followers had argued that analogy was impossible. Thomists, pressed to respond to this premise, often resorted to discussing the notion of a concept and in what sense it had to be "unified" in order to preserve the validity of a syllogism.36 But is Cajetan's understanding of "concepts" un-Thomistic, or otherwise at odds with a Thomistic understanding of analogy? Fortunately, Cajetan's writings are quite clear on his understanding of "concept." In the most basic sense, the conceptus is just that which mediates thinking and signifying. The concept is the act of simple apprehension, the act of intellect by virtue of which something is understood, and by virtue of which a word is said to signify a thing. Cajetan spells this out in his commentary on De Ente et Essentia: "a thing is understood at the time when we form its concept. . . . [T]he formation of a concept is the making of the external thing actually known."37 Furthermore, in his commentary on the Summa, Cajetan writes: "words only signify things by the mediation of intellectual conception; therefore signification is caused by conception."38 In short, a 36. On this challenge, and the inadequacy of Aquinas's remarks on analogy to address it, see Joshua P. Hochschild, "Did Aquinas Answer Cajetan's Question? Aquinas's Semantic Rules for Analogy," in Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 77 (2003): 273–88. 37. Cajetan, Commentaria in De Ente et Essentia [=CDEE] §67: "res intelligitur quando ejus conceptum formamus . . . . conceptus formatio est factio rei extra actu intelectae." 38. Cajetan, Commentaria in Summam Theologiae St Thomae, I.13.1, n.3: "voces significant res non nisi media conceptione intellectus; igitur significatio causatur ex conceptione." 252 JOSHUA P. HOCHSCHILD word signifies a thing by the mediation of a concept, and a concept is just what causes a thing to be understood.39 Cajetan's point about the "conceptus" here is the general medieval one that to form a concept is to establish an understanding. Given the common notion of signification as the establishment of understanding,40 it is hardly controversial to assert that signification takes place by the mediation of a concept.41 And so it should not be controversial that the logical consideration of acts of simple apprehension manifests itself as consideration of "concepts," and that terms which signify analogically would be analyzed with respect to the concepts by virtue of which they so signify.42 Obviously, such an understanding of "concepts" is not inconsistent with the observation that signifying analogically is a property of terms only in the context of particular propositions, representing particular acts of judgment. Such is the nature of what medieval thinkers, including Aquinas, called the 39. Actually the "concept" discussed in this paragraph-that by which something is signified and understood-is by Cajetan and other Thomists in some contexts called by a more technical name, the formal concept, to distinguish it from the objective concept; see for example, CDEE §14. See also Jacques Maritain, Distinguish to Unite, or The Degrees of Knowledge, trans. Gerald B. Phelan (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1959), App. I ("The Concept"), pp. 387–417. 40. Gabriel Nuchelmans offers as the standard definition of "significare" for latescholastic philosophers: "representing some thing or some things or in some way to the cognitive faculty" (Nuchelmans, Late-Scholastic and Humanist Theories of the Proposition [Amsterdam: North Holland Publishing Company, 1980], p. 14). Paul Vincent Spade makes a similar point when he notes that "signification is a psychologicocausal property of terms" that is traced back to Boethius's claim that "'to signify' something was 'to establish an understanding of it"' (Spade, "The Semantics of Terms," in The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982], p. 188). See also E. J. Ashworth, "Signification and Modes of Signifying in Thirteenth-Century Logic," p. 44: "to signify is to establish an understanding (significare est intellectum constituere)." 41. Cajetan is also thus far consistent with Geach, cited above by Burrell as an important corrective to "Thomistic" epistemology: like Cajetan, Geach understood "concepts" to be "mental capacities" the possession of which are "presupposed by acts of judgment," and the "abstractionism" criticized by Geach is in no way implied in Cajetan's understanding of concepts sketched here. Peter Geach, Mental Acts: Their Content and Their Objects (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1957), p. 14 and passim. 42. Indeed, this medieval notion of the "conceptus" can easily be traced to the Greek tradition, as Sten Ebbesen has done, noting the connection between the classification of different kinds of equivocation (including analogy) on the one hand, and concept formation on the other. The Greek logical tradition's classification of different kinds of equivocals "can be understood as a classification of the reasons for choosing the same word to signify different concepts and things, deriving this classification from one that shows in how many ways concepts are formed" (Ebbesen, Commentators and Commentaries on Aristotle's Sophistici Elenchi: A Study of Post-Aristotelian Ancient and Medieval Writings on Fallacies, vol. 1: The Greek Tradition [Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1981], p. 190). In this endeavor, the role of judgment ("reasons for choosing the same word to signify different concepts and things") is undeniable. ANALOGY, SEMANTICS, AND HERMENEUTICS IN CAJETAN 253 first and second acts of intellection, that is, simple apprehension and composing and dividing (or judgment).43 Indeed, Gilson, who most fully articulated the supposed contrast between concept and judgment in analogy, both affirms that the "concept" should be understood in the sense Cajetan did,44 and recognizes that the formation of such concepts is consistent with, indeed part of, forming judgments.45 In the passage quoted above, Gilson makes it sound as if the question of "whether the concept designated by one term is or is not the same as the concept designated by the other" is raised by Scotus but not by Thomas; however, if one makes a Thomistic "judgment of proportion," which allows one to "make of the concept a usage . . . [which is] analogical," the Scotistic question can arise. For instance, judging that there is a proportion between the relation of the eye to its object and the relation of the intellect to its object, we agree to predicate "sight" of both the eye and the intellect. But is the same concept signified by the predicate when we say "the eye sees" as is signified by the same predicate when we say that "the intellect sees"? To be sure, the question about the identity or non-identity of concepts does not need to be answered before we are able to form the former judgment of proportion; but the question about concepts is compatible with- and, in fact, is raised by-the judgment. The question becomes particularly pressing when we are confronted with Scotistic arguments that call into question the logical possibility of making such judgments. 43. Nuchelmans clarifies that there are actually two senses of judgment one can consider: there is a kind of judging that is really an apprehension which forms a mental proposition (the "apprehensive proposition"), and there is a kind of judging that is the act of knowing, believing, or opining that this mental proposition is (or is not) true (Nuchelmans, Late-Scholastic and Humanist Theories of the Proposition, pp. 74–76). However, since the latter judgment requires the former apprehensive proposition, which in turn implies an apprehension of the terms of the apprehensive proposition, Nuchelmans's analysis only confirms that judgment is not opposed to, but rather presupposes, semantic considerations. As he puts it: in general questions concerning acts of judging, knowing, and believing, and concerning objects of knowledge and belief, were treated by scholastic philosophers for other reasons than sheer curiosity about the semantics of declarative sentences. . . . But in dealing with the psychological and epistemological issues which were forced upon them by their theological interests or the pursuit of wider inquiries of a similar type, they were unavoidably faced with problems which have a predominantly semantical character (p. 103). On the late-scholastic Thomist understanding of apprehensive propositions and the object of judgment, see pp. 99–102, 111–12. 44. See Étienne Gilson, Linguistics and Philosophy: An Essay on the Philosophical Constants of Language, trans. John Lyon (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988), pp. 75–78, 187 n.25. 45. See Étienne Gilson, The Elements of Christian Philosophy (New York: New American Library, 1963), p. 250. 254 JOSHUA P. HOCHSCHILD In fact, I would suggest that understood in context, Gilson's remarks about the difference between Aquinas's emphasis on judgment and Scotus's emphasis on concepts should never have become the basis for a Thomistic objection to a semantic analysis of analogy. First, it must be remembered that in the relevant passage, Gilson is not concerned with analogy as such, but with "the analogy of being" ('analogie de l'être') and Scotus's objections to it; Gilson intends to explain how Aquinas and Scotus differ in understanding the central metaphysical notion, being. Second, in explaining this difference, Gilson several times emphasizes that Aquinas and Scotus are not so much disagreeing as talking past each other.46 And third, as the source of their different approaches to being, Gilson identifies their different views of what concepts are, how they are formed, and how they signify; he nowhere denies, nor could he, that Aquinas believes that judgments of proportion are made with concepts. Indeed, as Gilson notes, "It is in fact thanks to judgment of proportion that, without a change of nature, one can make of the concept a usage sometimes equivocal, sometimes analogical, sometimes univocal" (emphasis added). Such an observation simply cannot be the basis for the conclusion that it is against the spirit of Aquinas for a logician to consider the concepts that result from such a judgment of proportion, that is, those concepts by virtue of which analogous terms signify. The consistency of attending to both concept and judgment is further borne out by Yves Simon's reflections, which Burrell had taken as implicitly critical of Cajetan. Closely following Cajetan's theory, Simon demonstrates that, even within the framework of Cajetan's semantic analysis and an attention to concepts, one can be sensitive to the role of judgment in analogy.47 Indeed, the core of Simon's "On Order in Analogical Sets" can be considered an elaboration of Cajetan's discussion of abstraction in the sixth chapter of De Nominum Analogia (§§41–58, Qualis sit abstractio analogi ab 46. Gilson, Jean Duns Scot, 101–2: "les interlocuteurs ne parlent pas la même langue . . . . lorsqu'il rencontre l'analogie thomiste, on ne peut pas dire exactement que Duns Scot le réfute, on dirai plutôt qu'il ne peut pas y croire . . . . Évidement, ce serait perdre son temps que de vouloir concilier les deux doctrines et, tout autant, de réfuter l'une par l'autre." 47. Simon's article assumes, and never dissents from, Cajetan's treatment of analogy. Simon makes it clear he is using Cajetan's classification of analogous modes, and Cajetan's terminology for that classification (Simon, "On Order in Analogical Sets," p. 137); he agrees with Cajetan that "in [analogy of] attribution . . . the object signified by the analogical term exists intrinsically in only one" of the analogates (p. 137); like Cajetan, Simon regards analogy of proper proportionality as the most genuine form of analogy (p. 138 ff.), and, as in Cajetan's theory, this is connected to the fact that in analogy of proportionality "the form designated by the analogical term exists intrinsically in each and every one of the analogates" (p. 138; cf. p. 140); Simon defends Cajetan against the criticisms of F. A. Blanche (p. 165–167, n.27); and he cites approvingly other unabashed Cajetanians (John of St. Thomas and James Anderson). ANALOGY, SEMANTICS, AND HERMENEUTICS IN CAJETAN 255 analogatis).48 There, Cajetan clarifies the sense of "abstraction" that applies to analogy of proper proportionality, and his conclusions become the central points of Simon's reflection.49 While a more extended discussion of what Cajetan says in that chapter cannot be articulated here, we can find in Cajetan precisely those points made by Simon and highlighted by Burell: since analogical unity is irreducible (DNA §49), from diverse analogates there can not be abstraction properly speaking (§§44, 56; cf. §§33–34), but there is a qualified sense of abstraction (§56), which actually involves a kind of "confusion" (§57)50; analogical unity always "retains distinction" (§49), and thus we must be vigilant lest we ignore the distinctions and treat an analogical term as univocal (§§53–54, 57).51 This confirms that Cajetan's project is not to try to reduce analogy to something else, but to characterize as specifically as possible the semantics of analogical terms. That Cajetan's semantic characterizations vindicate what Simon calls the irreducibility of proportional unity, and the impossibility of 48. Simon might also be benefitting from John of St. Thomas's own reflections on this part of Cajetan's theory, in Ars Logica, p. 2, q. 13, a. 5, "Utrum in analogis detur unus conceptus ab inferioribus praecisus" (491a40–500b47). Simon was the chief translator of sections of the Secunda Pars of the Ars Logica, published (five years before Simon's "On Order in Analogical Sets") as The Material Logic of John of St. Thomas: Basic Treatises (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955). At one point, the translation renders the phrase "Analoga attributionis et analoga metaphorica" (491b21–22, literally: "analogues of attribution and metaphorical analogues") as "The terms of an analogous set, in analogy of attribution or of metaphor" (p. 168, emphasis added). 49. Contra Burrell (Analogy and Philosophical Language, p. 203), Simon does take analogy of proper proportionality as the "normal form" or genuine kind of analogy. 50. All of this is why, in the previous chapter of De Nominum Analogia, Cajetan had already acknowledged that one must qualify the sense in which one may speak of an analogical concept (De Nominum Analogia [DNA] §§36–37). 51. Oddly, when Burrell considers Cajetan's presentation of the irreducibility of proportional unity and the impossibility of abstraction properly speaking, he finds them fraught with difficulty. Says Burrell: [E]ven though [according to Cajetan] "it is impossible to abstract from these many something which is absolutely one," even if we cannot pretend to a common concept, we still can and do use a single term like being (or principle). Cajetan allows us to do so on the strength of similitude, but the "very similitude itself is only proportional, and its foundation is only proportionally one"; in this way "proportional similitude in its very nature includes . . . diversity" ([DNA] nn.48–49). Something is very wrong here, of course. Language is taking a holiday. If one needs to speak of a similitude, it had best be a single one and not a proportional one. For whether we think of similitude as a kind of template or prefer to be guided by a careful use of language, the upshot will have to be something invariant, else why invoke the expression? Careful attention to language would note that 'x is similar to y' is an ellipsis which must furnish 'in respect z' on demand. Now the precise respect in which substantial and quantitative predicates are similar defies expression. This is indeed the entire thrust of Cajetan's work: they are similar in so far as each is related to its to be (esse). (Burrell, Analogy and Philosophical Language, p. 14) 256 JOSHUA P. HOCHSCHILD a common element being purely abstracted, speaks to both the strength and the limits of semantic analysis; it certainly does not falsify the phenomenon of analogy, nor is it an abuse of semantic analysis.52 Indeed, these insights only help to distill the further semantic question which concerned Cajetan, one which Simon leaves unanswered (though acknowledged):53 how does proportional unity suffice to unify syllogistic inferences? Context, Judgment, and the History of Medieval Logic I have argued that, in principle, there is nothing about a semantic analysis of terms as such which is incompatible with a sensitivity to the role that a sentence or inference plays in giving context to terms. As a matter of fact, historians of logic have long noted that it is precisely the context of particular inferences, especially problematic or questionable inferences (sophismata), which helped to foster the medieval development of sophisticated treatments of the logical properties of propositions and terms. L. M. de Rijk has shown that the analysis of fallacy was a primary motive in the development of terminist logic.54 Likewise Alexander Broadie, in his 52. In this regard, we might say that Cajetan's treatment of analogy corroborates Gadamer's judgment: The merit of semantic analysis, it seems to me, is that it has brought the structural totality of language to our attention and thereby has pointed out the limitations of the false ideal of unambiguous signs or symbols and of the potential of language for logical formalization. (Hans-Georg Gadamer, "Semantics and Hermeneutics," trans. P. Christopher Smith, in Hans-Georg Gadamer, Philosophical Hermeneutics, trans. and ed. David E. Linge [Berkeley: University of California Pres, 1976], p. 83). 53. Simon, "On Order in Analogical Sets," p. 139. From his papers archived in the Jacques Maritain Center at the University of Notre Dame, we learn that Simon planned to take up just this question in a book on analogy with the working title "The Science of the Unknown," of which the paper "On Order in Analogical Sets" would constitute one chapter. Yves R. Simon Papers, 1920–1959, University of Notre Dame, Box 2, Folder 18. 54. L. M. de Rijk, Logica Modernorum: A Contribution to the History of Early Terminist Logic. Vol. 1: On the Twelfth Century Theories of Fallacy (Assen: Van Gorcum and Company, 1962), p. 22: In the course of the present study it will become evident that the frequent occurrence of fallacies is not just a concomitant-as a reader of the Summulae might think-, but that the doctrine of fallacy forms the basis of terminist logic. For this logic developed as a result of the fact that, to a much greater extent than it had been done by Abailard and his contemporaries, the proposition was beginning to be subjected to a strictly linguistic analysis. ANALOGY, SEMANTICS, AND HERMENEUTICS IN CAJETAN 257 Introduction to Medieval Logic, explains: It was not uncommon for medieval logicians to begin their logic textbooks, at least those of their textbooks containing comprehensive accounts of logic, by considering terms first, and then reaching their study of inferences by way of an analysis of propositions. . . . But the fact that certain logicians adopted this order of exposition should not be taken to signify that they would have rejected the notion that terms, or at least some terms, should be expounded by reference to the role they play in valid inferences. On the contrary, their practice shows that they accepted this point.55 In fact, the very issue of the unity of the analogical concept arises out of a concern to account for certain kinds of inferences; in the face of Scotus's arguments that non-univocal terms subject potential syllogisms to the fallacy of equivocation, Thomists felt obliged to explain how a nonunivocal term could preserve the validity of a syllogism. In this sense, the discussion of the semantics of analogical terms, by Cajetan and others, grows out of a concern to account for certain kinds of arguments; acts of simple apprehension are discussed because of their role in predications and inferences-that is, because of their role in judgments. The discussion of the semantics of analogical terms, then, like much of medieval logic, can be seen as arising from sophisms and the intention to avoid them. Understood in this way, the discussion of analogous terms is of a piece with the rest of the project of the logica moderna as understood by De Rijk, and described by Norman Kretzmann: Perhaps the logica moderna was aimed originally at nothing more than providing ad hoc rules of inference to cover problematic locutions in ordinary discourse, but, although it retained that aim throughout its three-hundred year history, its principal aim soon became the development of a reasonably general account of the different ways in which words are used to stand for things and to operate on other words.56 However, elsewhere de Rijk does indicate that he believes that "the contextual approach" to language and "the doctrine of signification" are in tension; vide L. M. de Rijk "The Origins of the Theory of the Properties of Terms," The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 161–73. 55. Alexander Broadie, Introduction to Medieval Logic, 2d ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 8–9. 56. Norman Kretzmann, "Semantics, History, of," in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Paul Edwards [New York: Macmillan, 1967], 7: 371). See also E. J. Ashworth, "Logic, Medieval," §4: "Indeed, the avoidance of fallacy is at the heart of all new types of logical writing." 258 JOSHUA P. HOCHSCHILD Cajetan's Hermeneutic Sophistication A semantics of terms is not only theoretically compatible with a concern for judgment and context, it is, in fact, compatible in Cajetan's own philosophical work. Although one would not know it from the above criticisms, De Nominum Analogia, in the often-neglected later chapters, deals with inferences: the tenth chapter covers reasoning using analogous terms (Qualiter de analogo sit scientia); and the eleventh chapter offers warnings about understanding and using analogous terms (De cautelis necessariis circa analogorum nominum intellectum et usum).57 Indeed, this final chapter ends with a passage that explicitly speaks to the concern that analogy is always a matter of context. Cajetan here anticipates some possible confusions about analogous usage. After considering them individually, he concludes with a general warning: Whence if someone does not wish to err, he ought habitually to consider the occasion of the speech, and recall that he will apply the conditions of the extremes to the mean; thus indeed it will be easy to explain everything soundly, and to follow the truth.58 In other words, Cajetan explicitly reminds his readers that the proper sense of a term depends on the particular occasion of its use; when interpreting a term in an argument, one must be aware of the purpose of the argument. Far from recommending that the sense of the argument be determined from a prior analysis of its terms, Cajetan is reminding his readers that the only way to avoid mistakes in interpreting terms is to keep in mind the larger dialectical context in which those terms play a role. Such a point is rather obvious, and hardly incompatible with a discussion of the semantics of terms, even analogous terms. Indeed, even if Cajetan had not included this explicit acknowledgment of the importance of context in his treatise on analogy, his own practice would have implicitly affirmed his recognition of it. Cajetan wrote many commentaries, and even by 1498, when he wrote De Nominum Analogia, he had written commentaries on Porphyry's Isagoge, on Aquinas's De Ente et Essentia, and on several of Aristotle's logical works. In each of these, his interpretation of terms is consistently sensitive to the context of the arguments in which they are used. Even later, when he was writing his commentary on Aquinas's Summa Theologiae, Cajetan still often referred readers to his analysis of analogous terms in De Nominum Analogia; and yet in that commentary, Cajetan's remarks on 57. See Joshua P. Hochschild, "The Rest of Cajetan's Analogy Theory: De Nominum Analogia chapters 4–11," Forthcoming in International Philosophical Quarterly. 58. Emphasis added. DNA §125: "Unde si quis falli non vult, solerter sermonis causam coniectet, et extremorum conditiones medio applicaturum se recolat; sic enim facile erit omnia sane exponere, et veritatem assequi." ANALOGY, SEMANTICS, AND HERMENEUTICS IN CAJETAN 259 each article almost invariably begin with a discussion of how the terms of the article must be understood in order to be consistent with the intention of the author's arguments.59 Clearly Cajetan's concern with concepts did not preclude attention to context and judgment. Indeed, it would be more correct to say that it is precisely Cajetan's concern with acts of judgment and with the inferential context of propositions that led him to analyze concepts. IV. CONCLUSION In sum, the criticisms leveled against a semantic analysis of analogy, and against Cajetan's discussion of analogical concepts, do point to important truths about the limits of a semantic analysis of terms. However, they simply fail to condemn Cajetan's approach to analogy. Context is important to analogy, because analogical signification does not take place outside of particular judgments expressed in propositions, which themselves usually must be understood in larger dialectical contexts such as inferences. But Cajetan does not ignore this. His attention to the signification of terms, and to the concepts which mediate such signification, does not imply that context and judgment are irrelevant; indeed, it is partly motivated by the recognition that particularly important dialectical contexts, such as the arguments of metaphysicians, need to be better understood, and even defended. So the historical lesson is, first, that Cajetan's concern with the "concept" is not exclusively Scotistic nor otherwise un-Thomistic. Moreover, far from polluting Cajetan's theory, Scotus's influence clarifies the propriety, and precipitates the necessity, of a semantic analysis of analogy. Interpreters of De Nominum Analogia need to remember that Cajetan's concern with concepts is motivated by an attempt to develop a semantic analysis of analogy that will do justice to certain inferential contexts. In particular, Cajetan wants to account for the possibility of syllogisms mediated by analogical terms, syllogisms, common in metaphysics and theology, which depend on a judgment of non-univocal similarity. There is a larger, philosophical lesson here as well, about the theoretical alternatives available to philosophical semantics. The criticisms considered here all assume that semantic principles which are conceptualist and compositionalist are also necessarily reductionist. As we have seen, however, it is possible to analyze propositions as if their meanings depended on their component terms, yet without insisting that those meanings are predetermined by fixed meanings that those terms have independently of sentential and 59. The phenomenon really is ubiquitous, but one example of Cajetan's careful clarification of terms with respect to the role they play in the context of particular arguments is his commentary on ST Ia, q. 3, a. 3, which is discussed in Joshua P. Hochschild, "A Note on Cajetan's Theological Semantics," Sapientia 54 (1999): 367–76. 260 JOSHUA P. HOCHSCHILD inferential context. Cajetan, at least, worked with a semantic framework that was conceptualist and compositionalist, but also organicist. That is (to draw an analogy), for Cajetan, a proposition is related to its component terms much as an organism is related to its organs. The function of the whole depends on the functions of the parts, but the functions of the parts are also determined by, and in some sense depend on, the function of the whole. To speak more precisely, the general principle of semantic dependence of wholes on parts-compositionality-does not itself establish the semantic values of the parts. The semantic values of the parts must be determined by interpretation, with attention to context; and there is nothing about semantic compositionality that rules out-indeed we have seen that, for Cajetan, it presupposes-the hermeneutic dependence of parts on wholes.