Doctrine Of Analogy Research Articles

Zur analogen Einheit der transzendentalen Bestimmungen ‚Seiendes‘, ‚Eines‘, ‚Wahres‘, ‚Gutes‘ bei Meister Eckhart

The analogous unity between God and creature, which Eckhart assumes in his doctrine of the analogy of the communissima 'Being', 'One', 'True', 'Good' does not consist in a causal relation ('analogous causality'), as understood in recent studies, but in a sign relation: The creature functions as a medium, which indicates and manifests the being, one, true, good, which is God. This relation, however, is based on a causal relation which Eckhart interprets as participation. His understanding of participation differs fundamentally from that of Aquinas. Eckhart unfolds the practical consequences of his doctrine of analogy in his reflections on the ethos of seclusion. Keywords: doctrine of analogy, analogous unity (of God and creature), analogy of the transcendentals, participation (Eckart versus Thomas Aquinas), creature as sign, ethos of seclusion

Is Aquinas’s Doctrine of Analogy Really Unintelligible?

Thomas Williams maintains that the doctrine of analogy is unintelligible. In this paper, I scrutinize and reject Williams’s argument for that claim insofar as it applies to Thomas Aquinas’s particular version of the doctrine. After laying out Williams’s critique, I present an account of Aquinas’s conception of analogy. I identify three components of it: a semantic part, a metaphysical part, and a distinctive conception of inference. I briefly explain how all three of these components play a role in Aquinas’s philosophical theology. On the basis of these ideas, I proceed to demonstrate how Williams’s argument against analogy, understood as a set of reasons for rejecting Aquinas’s version of it, fails completely. I end by pointing out how hard it appears for anyone who rejects the doctrine of analogy to keep faith with the idea of creation ex nihilo.

ENGLISH-ISLAMIC LEGAL PRINCIPLES: THEIR ROLE AS TO COMPLEMENT NOTICEABLE GAPS IN THE CODIFIED LAWS IN PAKISTAN

Islamic considerations can be a useful tool to complement laws where statutory legislation comes short of covering newly-emerging propositions supposed to be covered by the laws of the land. This research works is based on the concept of equity in the UK which plays a moderating role in the legal framework of the UK. Islamic considerations and complementary sharia principles are also concomitant in the Saudi legal system. This article encompasses an analysis of sharia principles and their role to supplement laws in Pakistan. In addition, it also sheds light on the comparable analysis of Istihsan in Sharia Law with its analogous doctrine of equity in the UK. The methodology used to conduct study for the article is doctrinal employing exploratory philosophy along with inductive approach. The conclusions drawn from the discussion of this article would have a significant impact on the on-going debate of Islamic Legal Principles and would have a significant contribution in the existing literature. Moreover, the discussion and theories debated in the article will provide a base for the future studies in the relevant area.

Analogical Reasoning by Reference to Statute: What is the Judicial Function?

Analogy by reference to statute as a tool of legal analysis in the development of the common law is not prohibited. Recent cases confirm not only the existence of the tool but provide evidence of its use and application. However, to state that the judiciary on occasion develops the common law by analogy to statute – a concept that has been labelled the ‘doctrine of analogy’ – is simply to make a statement of conclusion. And that statement of conclusion invites several further questions. Is analogical reasoning by reference to statute qualitatively different from the usual type of analogical reasoning on which the common law depends? From what authority is this mode of reasoning derived? Put in different terms – what is the judicial function? This paper proposes that viewing the development of the common law through the lens of formal rules and substantive reasoning can assist in identifying the way the judiciary develops the common law by reference to statute, and the basis upon which the judiciary develops the common law by reference to statute.

Aquinas's Two Concepts of Analogy and a Complex Semantics for Naming the Simple God

Aquinas's Two Concepts of Analogy and a Complex Semantics for Naming the Simple God Joshua P. Hochschild THE TOPIC OF "divine names" as treated by Aquinas can be traced back to pagan Greek thinkers, Aristotle and earlier. More proximately, it can be traced to a Christian heavily influenced by that Greek tradition, (Pseudo-)Dionysius. At the beginning of his commentary on Dionysius's Divine Names, Aquinas describes it and three other works of Dionysius in terms of their relation to human reason. Features of God that pertain to the three divine persons and their essential unity "find no adequate likeness" in creatures; these are mysteries "exceeding the whole faculty of natural reason," treated in De divinis hypotyposibus. There are other truths about God revealed in Scripture that "our intellect cannot conceive" and that "exceed all that which can be apprehended by us"; these are treated in a work on Mystical Theology. There are other divine features that can be investigated by human reason, insofar as "some likeness in creatures is found"; in that case, it is possible for our intellect to be led to conceive of God from creatures. Some of these are merely metaphorical similitudes, as when God is said to be a lion, a stone, or the sun. Such "likenesses" obtain "according to something transferred from creatures to God." These characteristics, truly in creatures and not properly in God, are treated in a work on Symbolic Theology. But some likenesses obtain because of "something that in creatures is derived from God." Such divine characteristics— [End Page 155] expressed in words like "good," "just," "wise," and "powerful"—are treated in the work On Divine Names.1 Thus, according to Aquinas, Dionysius's Divine Names treats what can be understood of the proper attributes of the one God that are knowable by reason. Though the work clearly draws inspiration from faith, we could anachronistically say that it functions very much as an exercise in "natural theology." In particular it reflects on how our concepts and language can be extended to God precisely because they are derived from likenesses that emanate from and participate in their preeminent, perfect source. Words express—even if in a very exceptional way—what we know about divine reality. For Dionysius, reflecting on these words and the ways that they express divine realities is a matter not just of theological language, but of theological epistemology and metaphysics: the divine names are an occasion to contemplate divinity and its attributes. [End Page 156] Although Aquinas is deeply informed by this work, when he writes his own theological treatises the topic of "divine names" becomes more circumscribed. In the Summa theologiae, question 13 of the Prima pars addresses divine naming, but quite a lot is said about God, and about our knowledge of God, in questions 2 through 12. (A comparable structure is evident in the Summa contra Gentiles.) We could say that Aquinas is content to engage in divine naming before making it an object of reflection in its own right, but it is clear that, for Aquinas, the topic of divine naming is a more circumscribed part of theology. Rather than encompassing the investigations of natural theology, it is about how, as Lawrence Dewan has described, certain words as applied to God have "a distinctive meaning … and a distinctive way of meaning what they mean."2 For Aquinas, as for Dionysius, the "names" in question are not proper names, but any true predicates of God. At issue are words like "good," "just," "wise," and "powerful"—even the very word "God" (which is not really a proper name, for Aquinas, but functions more like a common term, albeit a very unique common term). The presumption is that these words can be truly predicated of God. However, given God's otherness from the creaturely context in which such words are learned, how do these words function when they are predicated of God? In short, rather than encompassing natural theology tout court, Aquinas's own doctrine of divine names is what we might call a theological semantics. Aquinas's doctrine of analogy is sometimes taken to be almost coincident with the topic of divine names, or at least...

ΕΝ ΑΡΧΗΙ ΗΝ Ο ΛΟΓΟΣ: THE LONG JOURNEY OF GRAMMATICAL ANALOGY

Grammar as a discipline devoted to the study of language was greatly advanced by the Alexandrian philologists, and especially by Aristarchus, as demonstrated by Stephanos Matthaios. In order to edit Homer and other literary authors, whose texts were often written in archaic Greek and presented many linguistic problems, the Alexandrians had to recognize linguistic grammatical categories and declensional patterns. In particular, to determine the correct orthography or accentuation of debated morphological forms they often employed analogy, which is generally defined as the doctrine that grammatical forms must follow strict rules of declension. Modern scholars have often opposed the Alexandrian doctrine of analogy to the Pergamene doctrine of ‘anomaly’, which favoured spoken usage to determine debated forms. Detlev Fehling and David Blank, however, have shown that this strong opposition never really existed and it is mostly due to Varro. More correctly, ancient grammarians identified inflectional rules as well as forms derived from spoken usage or otherwise aberrant forms—however, respect for spoken usage in the latter case was not labelled ‘anomaly’, which was never a technical term of ancient grammar. Rather, and especially in the Roman period, grammarians used the term ‘pathology’ to account for and explain irregular forms.

Logical space and the origins of pluralism in logic

The fact that there is a plurality of systems that we call logics makes it requisite to attempt an explanation and thorough evaluation of the role of logic. I exploit the analogical development towards the pluralism of geometry to show that both disciplines are about some kinds of space which they explicate and that we can choose with some freedom the tools for engaging in an enterprise of these disciplines. After revisiting the development of non-classical (i.e. non-Euclidian) geometries, I present logical expressivism, as coined by Robert Brandom, and, returning again to geometry, show that an analogous doctrine of geometrical expressivism can also provide a viable account of the nature and purpose of the discipline and the reasons for plurality of both geometries and logics.

The Re-birth of Soviet Criminal Law in Post-Soviet Russia

Unlike some other Soviet Codes, first acts of the Bolshevist Criminal law were not modeled after the pre-revolutionary imperial codes. In the early Soviet criminal legislation, key juridical categories were replaced by sociological categories. The Marxist-Leninist principle of supremacy of interests of the state over the interests of an individual was envisaged on the legislative level and became a fundamental principle of the Soviet criminal law: crimes against the state were made the gravest ones, and the punishment for these crimes was much heavier than for all other crimes. The principle of analogy allowed criminal prosecution even in the cases, where the offence was not stipulated in the Criminal Code. In 1930s, the trend towards criminal repression intensified. Big changes, including the restoration of the traditional vocabulary of criminal law, the limitation of the doctrine of analogy, the careful analysis of crime in terms of subject and object, took place in the Soviet criminal legislation in 1960, when the new Criminal Code of the RSFSR was adopted. 1990s saw the long-awaited humanization and modernization of Russian criminal law, but situation started to change after the turn of the millennium. Certain cases as well as recently passed pieces of the Russian legislation show the sings of old Soviet attitudes in contemporary Russian criminal law and law enforcement.

Predication or Participation? What is the Nature of Aquinas’ Doctrine of Analogy?

Predication or Participation? What is the Nature of Aquinas’ Doctrine of Analogy?

Early-Modern Irreligion and Theological Analogy: A Response to Gavin Hyman’s A Short History of Atheism

Historically, many Christians have understood God’s transcendence to imply God’s properties categorically differ from any created properties. For multiple historical figures, a problem arose for religious language: how can one talk of God at all if none of our predicates apply to God? What are we to make of creeds and Biblical passages that seem to predicate creaturely properties, such as goodness and wisdom, of God? Thomas Aquinas offered a solution: God is to be spoken of only through analogy (the doctrine of analogy). Gavin Hyman argues Aquinas’s doctrine of analogy was neglected prior to the early-modern period and the neglect of analogy produced the conception of a god vulnerable to atheistic arguments. Contra Hyman, in this paper, I show early-modern atheism arose in a theological context in which there was an active debate concerning analogy. Peter Browne (1665–1735) and William King (1650–1729) offered two competing conceptions of analogical predication that were debated through the 19th century, with interlocutors such as the freethinker Anthony Collins (1676–1729), theologian/philosopher George Berkeley (1685–1753), and skeptic David Hume (1711–1776). Lastly, I discuss the 18th century debate over theological analogy as part of the background relevant to understanding Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion .

Forward, Gillick: Are competent children autonomous medical decision makers? New developments in Australia.

Another chapter has opened in the tortured history of the status of Gillick competence. Never before has Gillick been extended to permit a mature child to make autonomous medical decisions over and above the curial ‘parens patriae’ power. In 2013, two judicial decisions promulgated from different Australian courts are in conflict over this most fundamental of questions. This Article situates the law of the ‘parens patriae’ power in Australia and, drawing on overseas conceptualizations of analogous doctrine, explores the bases for and potential consequences of this conflict.

Barth and the divine perfections

AbstractColin Gunton advanced the radical claim that Christians have univocal knowledge of God. Just this, he said in Act and Being, was the fruit of Christ's ministry and passion. Now, was Gunton right to find this teaching in Karl Barth – or at least, as an implication of Barth's celebrated rejection of ‘hellenist metaphysics’? This article aims to answer this question by examining Gunton's own claim in Act and Being, followed by a closer inspection of Barth's analysis of the doctrine of analogy in a long excursus in Church Dogmatics II/1.Contrary to some readings of Barth, I find Barth to be remarkably well-informed about the sophisticated terms of contemporary Roman Catholic debate about analogy, including the work of G. Sohngen and E. Pryzwara. Barth's central objection to the doctrine of analogy in this section appears to be the doctrine's reckless division (in Barth's eyes) of the Being of God into a ‘bare’ God, the subject of natural knowledge, and the God of the Gospel, known in Jesus Christ. But such reckless abstraction cannot be laid at the feet of Roman theologians alone! Barth extensively examines, and finds wanting, J. A. Quenstedt's doctrine of analogy, and the knowledge of God it affords, all stripped, Barth charges, of the justifying grace of Jesus Christ. From these pieces, Barth builds his own ‘doctrine of similarity’, a complex and near-baroque account, which seeks to ground knowledge of God in the living act of his revelation and redemption of sinners. All this makes one tempted to say that Gunton must be wrong in his assessment either of univocal predication or of its roots in the theology of Karl Barth.But passages from the same volume of the Church Dogmatics make one second-guess that first conclusion. When Barth turns from his methodological sections in volume II/1 to the material depiction of the divine perfections, he appears to lay aside every hesitation and speak as directly, as plainly and, it seems, as ‘univocally’ as Gunton could ever desire. Some examples from the perfection of divine righteousness point to Barth's startling use of frank and direct human terms for God's own reality and his unembarrassed use of such terms to set out the very ‘heart of God’.Yet things are never quite what they seem in Barth. A brief comparison between Gunton's univocal predication and Barth's own use of christological predication reveals some fault-lines between the two, and an explanation, based on Barth's own doctrine of justification, is offered in its place.

‘We Know in Part’: How the Positive Apophaticism of Aquinas Transforms the Negative Theology of Pseudo‐Dionysius

There has been a new reception and revival of interest in the Pseudo‐Dionysius both in popular and academic circles, which has impacted Thomistic scholarship. Scholars roughly from the time of Vatican II have stressed the importance of Pseudo‐Dionysius to Thomistic thought, in reaction to a previous emphasis on the ‘Aristotelian’ and analytic aspects of Thomistic thought. Whilst this approach uncovered a largely neglected area, the converse now appears to be the case: the Dionysian influence on Thomas is disproportionately exaggerated, leading to a false identification of the two thinkers. This paper argues that whereas the negative theology of Pseudo‐Dionysius entailed the unknowability of God as the One beyond language, concept and being, Thomas developed a ‘positive apophaticism’ that transformed Denys in light of Augustine, Aristotle and, most importantly, Scripture itself.I first trace the roots of apophaticism showing how neo‐Platonism leads to equivocal God‐talk and why Aquinas goes further than Dionysius in his rejection of equivocity. I then show how the unknowability of God taught by Dionysius is qualified by Thomas through his teaching on the ‘quidditative’ knowledge in the next life and through the doctrine of analogy in the present life that makes possible the naming of God using positive ‘perfection terms.’The primary perfection term is Being which, in contrast to the Dionysian God ‘beyond being,’ applies to God literally and pre‐eminently. This has implications for epistemology since, as Aristotle showed, knowledge and rational discourse are grounded in Being. The reason Denys' theology leads to an absolute unknowing is because He denies that God is identical with Being, whereas Aquinas' metaphysics, while denying univocal being, retains true speech about God, including logical discourse by analogy.I finally explain how in spite of believing Dionysius to be a first century apostolic convert, Thomas was able to transform his teaching because of presuppositions regarding the authority of Scripture that he interprets in light of Augustine, Aristotle and a developing understanding of a ‘literal’ sense that stands in contrast to the ‘anagogical’ hermeneutic of Dionysius. This results in an undermining of Dionysian elitism that anticipates the work of the Reformers, beginning with John Wyclif. In the contemporary context, Thomas' ‘positive apophaticism’ offers a powerful resource for addressing an increasingly agnostic culture.

PHILOSOPHY AS TRAGEDY OR WHAT WORDS WON'T GIVE

AbstractThis article examines Cavell's problematic understanding of scepticism and the knowledge of other minds with respect to his long preoccupation with tragedy. I point to the meta‐philosophical questions Cavell continually raises but fails to address such that a philosophy as tragedy is frequently announced. Taking the same meta‐philosophical questions raised by the inability of words to give us access to certain knowledge, I then rethink this problematic theologically. I show the way Cavell hints at a Christology and a doctrine of analogy neither of which he develops. In developing these two theologoumenon I make some observations on the relationship between theology, philosophy and the endemic potential of the tragic.

Torts in Three Dimensions: Lessons from Birth

This article moves beyond the sterile debate about whether torts is really concerned with promoting efficiency or corrective justice, and instead establishes a wholly new, three-dimensional paradigm. It explains how the growth of industrialization during the nineteenth century exposed as chaotic the individuation of cases under the original law of trespass. Capitalism required instead a more rational legal structure so as to enable entrepreneurs to gauge their own potential exposure to liability for the injuries that their activities caused. Perhaps counter-intuitively, the article also shows how the new law of torts to which capitalism thus gave birth actually expanded the range of liability to which businesses could be exposed. So we have an apparent paradox: the law of torts which had been created by capitalism seems to have worked against the interests of capital.This paradox may be resolved, however, once we appreciate that the law is not composed only of a certain substantive doctrinal content, but also of a particular form or structure. The problem with the currently dominant theories of torts is that they address the former to the almost total exclusion of the latter. A three-dimensional account – which considers both content and form over a given time – enables us to see that the development of capitalism brought forth tort law’s specific form, which is actually so pervasive as to be found not just in the United States but also in other common law – and even most civil law – jurisdictions. On the other hand, the content of the law – which is, by contrast, different from jurisdiction to jurisdiction – is fashioned through the volatile interaction of a multiplicity of forces, including public morality, religion, politics, and everyday social practices. Yet, as the analysis of this period makes clear, the form of law circumscribes the possible substantive content of tort law doctrine, so that the expansion of liability for industrial accidents as capitalism took hold was always confined within limits that the new economic system could tolerate. The new taxonomy of torts set out by Holmes in 1870 was underpinned by an understanding that entrepreneurship requires that the law set out a number of a priori, systemic rules so that individuals can calculate for themselves the benefits and risks inherent in any given activity. In particular, no business can meaningfully assess ex ante its exposure to potential liability if the law does not provide a rule to determine who, among its potential victims, could seek redress. That task was performed within the law of contracts by the doctrine of privity. It was vital that the new law of non-intentional torts developed an analogous doctrine. So the doctrine of duty of care came to the fore. Contrary to the views of the Chicago School, this article concludes by demonstrating that it is not the doctrine of breach that provides the fulcrum of the relationship between tort law and the economy, but the doctrine of duty.

ON BEING HEARD BUT NOT SEEN: MILBANK AND LASH ON AQUINAS, ANALOGY AND AGNOSTICISM

AbstractThe article investigates an important recent dispute within systematic theology over the interpretation of Thomas Aquinas. John Milbank has defended the view that the doctrine of analogy in Aquinas is peculiarly implicated with his entire ontology, that it cannot be understood in merely semantic terms, and that it involves a less “agnostic” position on knowledge of God than is often assumed. The article critically engages this position in two ways. It offers an archaeology of the prior polemical context out of which the claim arose, for the meaning and purpose of Milbank's claim are illuminated once it is seen as the vigorous repudiation of a “grammatical” or “linguistic” interpretation of Thomas on analogy which had been proffered earlier by Nicholas Lash. It will also provide a close investigation of the citations and interpretations of Aquinas texts that Milbank uses to ground his position, in order to adjudicate the dispute with Lash. The result will be to call strongly into question the plausibility of Milbank's readings of Aquinas. The article also indicates at several points the way in which those readings are shaped by an overriding anti‐Kantian thrust in Milbank's entire approach to the discussion. In conclusion, it adumbrates the larger and older question which subtends the entire dispute: to what degree is some kind of vision or intuitive grasp of being as such, or of God's being, granted human beings in this life?

The Twofold Character of Thomas Aquinas’s Analogy of Being

In this paper I argue that Aquinas's doctrine of analogy must be understood against the background of his overall philosophy of being. I suggest that Thomas's oscillation between an analogy of attribution and proper proportionality should be understood as an attempt to address analogy from two different, albeit complementary, metaphysical perspectives. If created being is, as Thomas maintains, a composition of essence and existential act, then it would seem that the analogy of being would bear out the implications of the composite character of being. Thus, if Thomas's analogy sometimes focuses on formal causality and at other times upon the communication of act via efficient causality, it is not because he adopts a new doctrine of being that supplants his earlier teaching but because of the twofold character of created being.

Aquinas and Onto-theology

For Heidegger, onto-theology is the use of abstract, impersonal categories under the principle of sufficient reason that has one goal and two results. The goal is to make fully intelligible to human understanding. The results are the disappearance of mystery from our understanding of and the loss of any religious significance for the God that results. I argue that Aquinas is not guilty of onto-theology because his use of abstract, impersonal categories is subsumed (aufgehoben, teleologically suspended) in his use of personal categories and because his doctrine of analogy retains mystery in our understanding of God.

Analogia non Entis sed Entitatis: The Ontological Consequences of the Doctrine of Analogy

Abstract: Much recent theology, influenced by the linguistic turn in postmodernity, has sought to ground a reconnection of God and the world, and thus a rediscovery of the possibilities of theology, in a doctrine of analogy, which, it is claimed, is found in medieval theology. However, a close examination of the doctrine of analogy present in the work of St Thomas Aquinas, his precursors and interpreters, demonstrates that analogy was not being used to do the work it is now called to do, and cannot in fact bear that weight.

The Role of Focus in Aquinas’s Doctrine of Analogy

The Role of Focus in Aquinas’s Doctrine of Analogy