Analogy (Philosophy)

Reading Thomas Joseph White’s The Incarnate Lord is a very great pleasure. His carefully argued and measured theology draws on the thinking of St. Thomas Aquinas in original and fruitful ways. As a lover of the theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar, however, I must confess that my enjoyment was occasionally tempered with suffering—but, shall we say, only in the lower parts of my soul.
    Among the many things I appreciate in this book is Fr. White’s love of patristic and medieval sources. Following his guide, St. Thomas Aquinas, he combines precision with breadth of knowledge and depth of thought. Further, like St. Thomas’s generous reading of manifold sources, Fr. White makes frequent irenic gestures. I am thinking in particular of the emphasis on the filial mode of Christ’s obedience throughout, plus the gentle reading of Barth’s treatment of obedience and the end of chapter 8 on the death of Christ.
He and I share many points of agreement, almost too many to mention: the enduring importance of Chalcedonian Christological metaphysics; a suspicion of liberal historicism; and an opposition to theological anachronisms, in which the Person of Christ is interpreted according to contemporary mores rather than through revelation. I will expand on two areas of particular agreement (on analogy and on the Son’s obedience), before raising a question concerning the Beatific Vision, and then recording some criticisms regarding soteriology (specifically, regarding Christ’s abandonment and descent).

Con i contributi di: Anthony Kenny · Andreas Speer · Jocelyn Benoist · Francesco Fronterotta · Enrico Berti · Riccardo Chiaradonna · Mauro Zonta · Francesco Marrone · Marco Lamanna · Paul Richard Blum · Siegrid Agostini · Igor Agostini · Alice Ragni · Francesco Campagnola · Jan Čížek · Pietro Montani · Pierluigi Valenza · Antonello D’Angelo · Jean-François Courtine · Marco Damonte · Emmanuel Cattin · Vincent Holzer · Andrea Grillo · Andrea Bellocci · Francesco Valerio Tommasi · Philippe Nouzille

In recent debates on empathy in various disciplines, including philosophy, psychology, psychopathology, cognitive sciences, neurophysiology, the discussion has focused on empathic experiences within the intersubjective context, either between two individuals or among groups. But this is only one side of the coin. Since ancient times, subject-object and even object-object relationships were described in a way that cultural anthropology has defined as “animation”, that rhetorics has named “personification”, and that we would today call “empathic”. The chapter aims at exploring these objectual implications of empathy. Pinotti particularly criticizes the projective “hydraulic” model of communicating vessels–from subject to object–which builds the hermeneutical mainstream paradigm of any theorization of such relationships. With recourse to alternative theoretical perspectives, such as Gestalt theory of expression, “realistic” phenomenology, and theory of symbolic forms, the author proposes a newfound characterological approach that engages with acknowledging the originary expressive and pathemic character of things in themselves, and therefore in defending the fundamentum in re of objectual empathy.

Taking the important work of Grace Jantzen as its starting-point, this article challenges the dominant pan-metaphoricism of feminist philosophy of religion. Throughout, I defend an apophatic interpretation of analogy – analogy as a dynamic rhythm between affirmation and negation, praise and silence. I argue that Jantzen's negative position on apophaticism is related to her negative stance on the infinite ontological difference between creatures and creator. However, Jantzen's rejection of "traditional theology" is really, it is shown, a rejection of "dialectical theology". Without analogy, moreover, we are ironically left with a (metaphorical) theology of dialectical opposition. By contrast, the way of analogy guarantees that there is no dichotomy between the divine and the human. The "logic" of analogy is one of no contrast.

[THE PAPER IS IN FINNISH] This essay discusses three things, all of which are connected by a particular notion of relativity. In language, meaning is formed through relations between different concepts and other meanings in a semantic field, and in a particular context. Truth is based on arguments and theories, whose "truthfulness" is weighed in relation to other arguments and theories. Analogous reasoning emphasizes the importance of understanding the internal relations within the cases in question. In these three things under investigation, the notion of relativity is not synonymous with relativism, namely that for instance any "truth" is as "truthful" as any other "truth." Language, truth, or analogous reasoning is neither subjective nor objective but intersubjective.

Three fundamental systems of communication are defined: information, explanation, and imagination. Information is based on analytic distinctions between objects in the world. Explanatory communication provides knowledge through discourse, narration, logic, rhetoric and other forms of systemic elaboration. Intellectual discovery relies on a third system of communication, that of imagination. Rather than distinction or elaboration, imagination is rooted in intuition and analogy. The most powerful medium of the imagination is antonymous insight. The article discusses examples of the latter from warfare, politics, and science.

Usage and limits of analogy and metaphor in Aristotle’s science could be confusing. In some passages Aristotle uses both elements in explanations, and their clarity is defended. However, in other texts the metaphor is excluded from science and philosophy. In this article, I analyze the difference between metaphor and analogy and examine in what context can be used the metaphor. My thesis is that Aristotle uses the analogy as an argumentative resource understood by "epagogé" . On the case of metaphors, they should be excluded from science and philosophy, but is a valid strategy for some kind of speeches and as a pedagogical element of explanations.

Hésiode, dans la Théogonie, un poème que l’on date le plus souvent du VII e siècle av. J.-C., a déployé un récit qui fait de l’ordre du monde le résultat d’une série d’engendrements divins : la théogonie est une cosmogonie (Strauss Clay 2003, p. 13) . Or, Hésiode a donné, dans ce contexte, une ampleur considérable à un pouvoir traditionnellement reconnu à la Terre en Grèce ancienne, à savoir celui de faire croître.
Nous voudrions montrer que cette innovation lui a permis de fonder la cosmogonie sur la croissance de la Terre elle-même, et d’en parfaire ainsi la dimension de processus immanent – un geste séminal pour l’ensemble de la pensée présocratique du VI e siècle.
Pour ce faire, nous commencerons par tenter d’établir qu’en reconnaissant des « racines » à la Terre et à la Mer, et probablement aussi au Tartare et au Ciel, Hésiode a assimilé à une croissance végétale la génération des corps cosmiques qu’il décrit par ailleurs comme issus de la Terre sans accouplement – trahissant ainsi une
certaine conception de la génération végétale sans sexualité. Nous nous efforcerons ensuite de montrer que la croissance végétale offre à Hésiode des ressources pour attribuer au processus cosmogonique lui-même une causalité sur la structure de l’univers qui en résulte.
Nous ferons ainsi l’hypothèse qu’Hésiode pense la croissance végétale comme un mouvement ordonné par une symétrie – la plante pousse en même temps vers le haut et vers le bas – et que cette propriété, reconnue à la croissance de l’univers conçue comme une expansion de la Terre, l’a mené à donner une expression nouvelle à la
symétrie du système résultant d’un tel processus. Ce faisant, il fait de la cosmographie, où l’on déchiffre les traces de la genèse accomplie, le nouvel ancrage de l’imagination cosmogonique.

In 2002, just a few months after receiving my PhD, the San Paolo editions published my thesis with the title Teologia della modernità. Percorsi e Figure (San Paolo, Cinisello Balsamo 2002). The volume was out of print in a couple of years and was never reprinted. I thought I would make it available in chapters, beginning with the third part, the theological one, which I have less revised or used in other papers. The chapter in question deals with the interpretation of modernity offered by von Balthasar with particular reference to volume 5 of Glory. Since this is a text that is almost twenty years old, the bibliography is a bit out of date (although I have not seen any significant new titles on the subject) and some statements I would probably reformulate today. Since this is a draft file of the volume, there may be misprints or mistakes that were corrected in the printed version.

Nel 2002, pochi mesi dopo aver conseguito il dottorato, le edizioni San Paolo pubblicarono la mia tesi con il titolo Teologia della modernità. Percorsi e Figure (San Paolo, Cinisello Balsamo 2002). Il volume andò esaurito nel giro di un paio di anni e non è stato più ristampato. Ho pensato allora di metterlo a disposizione per capitoli iniziando dalla terza parte, quella teologica, che meno di tutte è stata da me rielaborata o ripresa in altre pubblicazioni. Il capitolo in questione tratta dell’interpretazione della modernità che offre von Balthasar con particolare riferimento al volume 5 di Gloria. Trattandosi di un testo che ha ormai quasi venti anni, la bibliografia è un po’ datata (anche se non ho visto grandi nuovi titoli sul tema) e alcune affermazioni probabilmente oggi le riformulerei. Trattandosi del file della bozza del volume possono esserci refusi o errori poi corretti sulla versione stampata

The analogy between love and sickness is a powerful conceptual device that structures our understanding of love (and perhaps partly our understanding sickness, too). We grasp love in the way we do because we have this analogy in mind. My aim in this paper is, firstly, to explore some of the reasons that can be called up to justify the analogy. I will try to identify the properties that love and sickness can be considered to share. I will therefore point out that love and sickness are both characterized by being alterations, conditions demanding a solution, seeming inexplicable, being detectable by symptoms, and so on. These common traits can provide some foundations for the analogy. But a good analogy is not created just because some common traits exist: the shared properties need to be relevant, and the analogy should let us discover new, interesting things about our target concept. So my second question in this paper is: what can we learn about love if we take the analogy between love and sickness seriously? I will develop the analogy, and will try to examine whether some other important traits of sickness can nevertheless be discovered in love, and how they are disguised. Sick persons are not normally responsible for their condition; sickness has possible causes and possible effects; there are therapies, doctors, hospitals, contagion, right or wrong diagnoses; sickness has special relations with voluntariness, and with beliefs. What does all this become on the side of love? Is the analogy successful, or does it end in failure?

There has been substantial work done interpreting the descriptive texts from the early-modern encounters of Portuguese colonizers in Brazil. The interpretations have had major difficulty with significant elements of the texts, which the interpreters found strange from the perspective of their particular contexts. For the most part, they dismiss these elements. It is suggested here that these elements are evidence of a specific style of thinking for coming to terms with nature in the New World. The point is not that the corpus in question can be reduced to this style of thinking. There might be other styles to be identified in the corpus. But this style of thinking gives shape to the corpus to a considerable measure. Moreover, it enables one to make sense of the most strange and puzzling passages of the corpus, such as the following one, describing a " water tree " supposedly found at the time in Bahia: " in its branches it has holes of the length of an arm, which are full of water… the origin of which is unknown… and it happens that 100 souls come to it, and they are all protected, [being able to] drink and wash everything they want, and there is never water shortage " (Cardim, 1925: 67)...

In “Plato’s Analogical Thought,” I argue that although there is no explicit
discussion of analogy as a philosophical concept in the dialogues, Plato’s thought
operates according to a logic of analogy. The thesis that Plato’s thought is analogical is
demonstrated by means of several analyses of the way that analogical structure takes root in some of Plato’s most important concepts and discussions. Through careful readings of the Platonic dialogues, it becomes clear that analogy plays a key role in Plato’s articulation of the structure of being, the cosmos, and logos.

I begin with an exploration of the meaning attached to analogy and an explanation
of its relation to imaging. From there, I turn to the Republic to demonstrate that the
divided line of Book VI reflects in its own form the analogical structure of Platonic
metaphysics. Next, I turn to Socrates’ discourse on the hypothesis of the forms,
discovering that, by means of the analogy of the eclipsed sun, hypothesis becomes the
logos that mediates truth and ignorance. In the Timaeus, a Pythagorean mathematician
and astronomer (Timaeus) provides an uncharacteristically direct account of the relation
between the way thought is expressed and what is thought in that expression. His
account amounts to claiming that there is an analogy between thought and its expression, which is implicitly demonstrated by his account of the cosmological principle that mediates being and becoming: chōra. Finally, I consider the Statesman dialogue, where the Eleatic Stranger seeks to provide a detailed account of the manner by which a
statesman rules. This account, I show, is premised on an analogy with the art of weaving,
which is itself an image of the Stranger’s own method. Hence, Platonic methodology is
itself also tied to the structure of analogy.

These analyses support the conclusion that Plato’s thought is thoroughly
analogical, thereby anticipating and influencing the philosophical role of the concept of
analogy in later traditions. As a result, however, analogy appears as a sign of the
necessarily incomplete nature of pure thought. In the end, this claim enables us to reflect
upon the predicament of philosophical reflection: that the very structure of a thought
foundational to Western philosophy relies on a concept antithetical to its own prescribed
hierarchy. This reveals not a flaw in Plato’s thinking but a feature endemic to totalizing,
rational accounts. In addition, it is further argued that the analysis of analogy in Plato’s
work reveals the significance of discursive thought to philosophical practice. By
revealing the limits of rational accounts, such considerations of the role of analogy turn
us toward a reassessment of the value of non-thetic expressions of thought.

Considerable quantities of Nordic/Baltic amber occur in Irish later Bronze Age deposits. This exotic material reached Ireland through exchange networks that may have stretched all the way to the coasts of Denmark. This paper reviews some of that evidence and then looks to the texts of medieval Ireland in a search for analogies of how such travel might have been socially facilitated.

L’essere costituisce il tema per eccellenza, antichissimo e inesauribile, della filosofia, nel cui ambito l’analogia, d’altra parte, viene prevalentemente considerata come un meccanismo logico subordinato alle leggi universali del pensare e funzionale ad argomenti più eminenti (assai istruttivo in proposito è il caso dell’analogia entis). In questo scritto si propone invece una rara tematizzazione della struttura analogica come tale, con ciò prospettando la possibilità di ripensare in modo radicale l'essere e il suo senso. Tra i diversi interlocutori, due spiccano su tutti: Aristotele, il primo a fornire una definizione tecnica di analogia, e Heidegger, che nel XX secolo ha rilanciato la questione del senso di essere.

Being constitutes the very ancient and inexhaustible theme par excellence of philosophy, in which the analogy, on the other hand, is mainly considered as a logical mechanism subordinated to the universal laws of thinking and functional to more eminent arguments (very instructive in this regard it is the case of the analogy entis). In this paper, on the other hand, a rare thematization of the analog structure as such is proposed, thereby proposing the possibility of radically rethinking being and its meaning. Among the various interlocutors, two stand out above all: Aristotle, the first to provide a technical definition of analogy, and Heidegger, who in the twentieth century raised the question of the sense of being.

English translation of paper title: The Microcosm topos as an analogical figure of thought in the Renaissance as displayed in Charles de Bovelles's philosophy.

This paper is part of a larger research project on the new type of rationality developed in the Renaissance: inclusive and reconciliatory rather than dissentive and discriminatory. It focuses on the microcosm-macrocosm analogy as used by Charles de Bovelles and shows how this relational "figure of thought" (Denkfigur) becomes a major instrument of an indeed alternative type of rationality. The paper also discusses in what ways Michel Foucault failed to appreciate the philosophical novelty in the Renaissance's use of analogy.

Se examina aquí las relaciones analógicas en los Andes entre dominios supuestamente separados: en este caso las actividades de tejer y la agricultura. Hacemos una comparación entre la producción de la papa y la producción del textil en dos lugares que bordean al Lago Titicaca: Chukiñapi, cerca de Santiago de Huata, la comunidad de la tejedora Cipriana Apaza Mamani, y Qalamaya, Compi, lugar de nacimiento de Juan de Dios Yapita, ambos en la provincia Omasuyos (departamento de La Paz). En estas dos comunidades, son vitales la producción de papa y la elaboración de textiles, especialmente aquellos de colores naturales usados para cargar la papa cruda o llevar la papa cocida en merienda, que son muy distintos de otras regiones. Buscamos entender cómo esta tejedora desarrolla su patrón de correspondencias entre sus tejidos y sus chacras de papa. En estas comparaciones, consideramos las relaciones analógicas como un lenguaje de asociaciones, tan complejo como cualquier otro sistema de pensamiento. Al mismo tiempo, consideramos las posibles funciones de la analogía en el pensamiento aymara.

Adrian Bejan, the author of this book and a professor of mechanical engineering, invented what he calls the "constructal law," which he defines as follows:  “For a flow system to persist in time (to live) it must evolve freely such that it provides greater access to its currents.”  Chapter 8 explicitly applies this physics concept to political matters, and Bejan also claims it is relevant to ethics.  The present review argues, among other things, that the application of the constructal law to ethical and political matters is a faulty analogy.

The Author proposes to describe the possible foundations of a Trinitarian theism that may be a philosophically adequate translation of the Johannine declaration: " God is love " , introduced by some contemporary thinkers as a key to resolving some aporias within classic theism. This is done by way of analysis of Trinitarian ontology and relational ontology, for which there is an attempt to provide a shareable phenomenological basis. The paper then goes on to questions of epistemology (hyperphatic theology) linked to the ability of human reason and human language to express the categories introduced in this analysis, categories that are nothing else but a renewed philosophical appreciation of the terminology proper to Trinitarian speculation.

Sommario: L'autore si propone di descrivere i possibili fondamenti di un teismo trinitario che sia una traduzione filosoficamente adeguata dell'affermazione giovannea " Dio è amore " , introdotta da alcuni pensatori contemporanei come chiave di volta per risolvere alcune aporie interne al teismo classico. Il percorso descritto passa attraverso l'analisi dell'ontologia trinitaria e dell'ontologia relazionale, alle quali si tenta di fornire una base fenomenologica condivisibile. Per poi spostarsi su questioni di epistemologia (teologia iperfatica) legate alla capacità della nostra ragione e del nostro linguaggio di esprimere le categorie introdotte nell'analisi, le quali non sono altro che la rivalutazione filosofica della terminologia propria della speculazione trinitaria.

The juxtaposition of style or historical epochs (Gothic against Greek, past
against present) is a common attribute of nineteenth century architectural
criticism. While Pugin's Contrasts; Or, A Parallel Between the Noble Edifices Of
The Fourteenth And Fifteenth Centuries, And Similar Buildings of the Present
Day (1836) provides an explicit example of this methodology a similar reliance
on stylistic and/or temporal binaries is also evident in the later writings of John
Ruskin and Oscar Wilde. The aim of this paper is to compare Pugin's Contrasts
with those of Ruskin and Wilde. Initially adhering to the romantic proposition
that all objects are dependent on the development of an ‘opposite’ for their
representation and being, the treatment of this ‘other’ by each critic reveals
divergent stylistic motives ranging from the hierarchical (asserting the authority
of one by the denigration of the other), appropriation (where opposites combine
to generate a third and superior category) and analogical (the simultaneous
acknowledgement and autonomy of similarity and difference). Acknowledging a
third conceptualisation of the ‘other’ (analogy) that fails to conform with
postcolonial models of appropriation and denigration, the paper will also
demonstrate the methodological importance of ‘difference,’ and the varying
tolerances to it, within internal critiques of English architectural practice
throughout the nineteenth century..

The transcendentals entered Western intellectual discourse as “vagrants” (ens vagans) – which roamed Aristotle’s categories, impervious to univocal abstraction. To traditional realists with an interest in distinguishing the mind-dependent from the real, these properties carried the unwelcome implication that it is not possible to state univocally how individuals exist in their own right, independently of how we think about them. Instead, properties like “thing,” “otherness,” “unity,” “goodness,” and “truth” pervade every category.

As a result, it is perhaps unsurprising that thinkers in the Western realist tradition have usually accorded transcendentals merely mind-dependent status for one reason or another – even though Aquinas also attributes to God the transcendentals in a mind-independent subsistent mode unavailable to our experience.  However, in the philosophies of Aquinas, John Poinsot, and Ralph Austin Powell, there are also reasons to consider the opposing view, and not only when the “natural knowledge” of Thomism is understood to emerge from experience of ens primum cognitum  (the first and undifferentiated experience of being),  which secures a terminus in the real for experience of the transcendentals.

In my view, what decisively resolves both the old problem of describing beings independently of how we think about them, and the perplexing nature of the transcendentals themselves, is to consider the implications of Poinsot’s work on real relation,  the significance of which Powell rediscovered in the 20th century,  and which John Deely later realised resolves a pivotal difficulty with the Aristotelian category of relation, namely that relatio rationis have “as their positive essence exactly the same positive structure as their mind-independent counterparts,”  making the mind-independence of categorial relation a mere accident, not something essential to relations. This paper articulates the respect in which this development implies that transcendentals are real, contra the traditional views of the foregoing authors upon whom my argument relies.

In this article, I will examine St. Edith Stein’s theory of religious language. Stein, who was both a professional philosopher and a mystic, and deeply rooted both in the tradition of negative theology and early phenomenology, held a peculiar version of univocity with regard to religious language. On the one hand, our concepts have something objectively in common with the thing they signify. On the other hand, our concepts are merely representations of the real. Therefore, when mystics say that God can be addressed “without words or images,” this does not entail anti-realism or non-cognitivism. Instead, according to Stein, this only means that words are not needed when the thing itself is present without mediation in the mystical experience.

Research using current literature on legal reasoning was conducted with the goals of (a) determining what skills are most important in good legal reasoning according to such literature, (b) determining the extent to which existing Law School Admission Test item types and subtypes are designed to assess those skills, and (c) suggesting test specifications or new or refined item types and formats that could be developed in the future to assess any important skills that appear [by (a) and (b)] to be measured in a limited or minimal way by the current LSAT. So far as can be determined, such systematic research using legal reasoning literature has never been previously conducted. This report presents the findings of this research.

This chapter focuses on the assessment of the first book of the Hippocratic treatise De diaeta as a source for the reconstruction of the lost book of Hetaclitus. We argue that this is an invaluable source which – with  due precautions and reservations – leads to the reconsideration of the nature and purpose of Heraclitus' book. 20 out of 24 "crafts" (τέχναι) and other practices adduced in chapters 11-24 of De diaeta, book I are attested in the authentic fragments of Hercalitus or in the Heraclitean tradition. This transforms Heraclitus from a physicist into anthropologist and once again confirms the correctness of the evidence of Diodotus that the book of Heraclitus "was not about nature, but about politeia". In their original context the examples from various τέχναι were conceived as empirical proofs (tekmeria) in support of the thesis "craft imitates nature" (ἡ τέχνη μιμεῖται τὴν φύσιν) which in turn demonstrates that in their works (ἔργα, ποιεῖν) humans unconsciously imitate the divine law of the harmony of opposites that permeates  the Universe and the world of polis. Heraclitus' book is the first theory of natural law and the first political utopia anticipating Plato's Republic.

Ce premier volume du dossier d'habilitation à diriger des recherches expose l'unité de mon travail depuis la maîtrise (nouvellement nommée Master 1) et résume quelques-uns de mes principaux travaux depuis la thèse de doctorat "Sens et connaissance". Les quatre sections qui composent ce mémoire de synthèse correspondent aux quatre rubriques du Volume 2, où sont réunis des travaux publiés. C'est pourquoi elles s'intitulent respectivement "Études simondoniennes", "Études de philosophie française contemporaine", "Études de philosophie allemande contemporaine" et "Publications préparatoires à La Société de l'invention/La Philosophie du paradoxe".

Dans notre société de communication, de connaissances mobiles et d’incertitude, la production et la diffusion des savoirs scientifiques connaissent une accélération particulièrement marquée. Les savoirs s’entrecroisent en dépassant les frontières entre les disciplines des sciences humaines et sociales et des sciences naturelles, de la vie et des technologies. Comment des concepts, des théories ou des méthodes circulent, s’échangent, s’empruntent, se transfèrent et se transforment dans le passage d’une discipline à l’autre ? En quoi cette pratique interdisciplinaire est-elle une plus-value créative dans la production de connaissances nouvelles pour comprendre des problèmes impossibles à résoudre à partir d’un seul regard discipliné ? Ce livre est un appel au dépassement des frontières arbitraires entre les communautés disciplinaires, un appel à la créativité scientifique sous contrainte de rigueur et une heureuse contribution à un nouveau style de pensée interdisciplinaire.

On ne sera jamais assez reconnaissant à l’égard du courant structuraliste non seulement des découvertes capitales qu’il a produites mais aussi d’avoir transmis aux générations futures le legs de la réintroduction de tous les paramètres évacués par nécessité épistémologique, tâche qui continue d’alimenter la recherche dans de nombreux champs disciplinaires. En histoire, le retour à l’archive contre les excès d’une reconstruction du passé fondées sur les représentations déposées dans les textes. En critique littéraire, la redécouverte des instances auctoriale et référentielle contre une conception strictement autotélique du texte. En linguistique enfin, où la prégnance de l’épistémologie structuraliste fut sans doute maximale, le retour du sujet et du référent dans les courants énonciativiste et cognitiviste contre une limitation de l’objet à la langue définie comme pur système de valeurs différentielles. À certains égards, la linguistique analogique participe de ce mouvement, en ce qu’elle introduit au sein de sa problématique cet élément mondain qui demeurait encore à l’écart des élaborations théoriques des linguistes, la substance du signifiant.Il ne nous semble pas nécessaire de démontrer que l’analogie joue un rôle capital dans la vie humaine. Cela est évident non seulement au plan développemental (apprentissages par analogie), au plan de l’histoire de l’humanité (caractère analogique des cosmogonies primitives) mais aussi au plan des conditions minimales d’exercice de la vie mentale, si l’on veut bien admettre que l’aptitude à catégoriser – la « fonction catégorielle » de Goldstein – est déjà un processus de nature analogique. Dans ces conditions, il serait pour le moins surprenant que cette création humaine qu’est le langage ne soit pas, d’une manière ou d’une autre, structurée selon des modalités analogiques.Il est évident qu’un concept aussi puissant doit être manié avec prudence, si l’on veut éviter la circularité consistant à s’extasier de découvrir de l’analogie partout après avoir postulé qu’elle n’était absente nulle part. Ce n’est pas parce qu’elle est omniprésente que l’analogie s’épuise dans le truisme de sa propre désignation. Si l’on veut se donner les moyens d’atteindre quelque résultat substantiel au moyen d’un tel concept, il convient donc de commencer par en donner une définition permettant d’en pénétrer la cohérence interne. C’est à cette question que les trois premiers chapitres de ce livre seront consacrés.Notre approche présentera la particularité de ne pas poser la proportion comme critère définitoire de l’analogie. Conformément à l’usage qui, dans une langue comme le français, autorise à formuler la relation « A est analogue à B », nous considérerons que l’analogie est en premier lieu une similitude d’un certain ordre et que la « quatrième proportionnelle » n’est qu’un type particulier d’analogie. D’où la distinction de nos deux premiers chapitres entre « analogie binaire » et « analogie proportionnelle ».En différant – au quatrième chapitre – la question de l’analogie linguistique, il est évident que nous cherchons à la fois à nous donner l’opportunité de découvrir, dans le concept d’analogie, autre chose que ce que la tradition des sciences du langage y a déposé et à légitimer, par l’explicitation préalable de la logique interne de l’analogie, la synthèse proposée à partir de ce concept. Nous tenterons de montrer, par cette synthèse, que la problématique analogique subsume bien plus que la question du symbolisme phonétique, et que l’on peut y intégrer les approches contemporaines de l’iconicité linguistique ainsi que le problème de l’« innovation sémantique », formulation que nous empruntons à Paul Ricoeur.Le cinquième et dernier chapitre, propose enfin quelques études dont la plupart ont été rédigées avant les réflexions théoriques qui nourrissent les quatre chapitres précédents. On y trouvera non seulement des illustrations particu¬lières de notre problématique analogique, mais aussi l’exposé de quelques notions qui l’ont nourrie et que nous n’avons pas jugé utile de présenter sous une forme nouvelle.

Estas páginas pretenden llevar a cabo una comprensión del pensamiento de Heráclito dentro de un espíritu aristotélico. Se pretende mostrar que allí ya se hallan esbozados ciertos temas que serán desarrollados por el Estagirita, como la predicación pros hen del ser o una concepción más elevada de la divinidad.

This volume contains a translation (facing pages, Latin and German) of Duns Scotus’s discussion of Lectura I d. 3 p. 1 and d. 8 p. 1 q. 3, where Scotus discusses how God can be known by means of a univocal concept of being, together with Scotus’s critique of divine illumination. In addition, it contains a historical-doctrinal introduction and detailed explanatory notes. By construing being as a univocal notion, Scotus finds new answers to two important questions: (1) How can we have knowledge of God? – By means of the univocal notion of being and of the transcendentals that are predicable of God and of creatures. (2) What gives unity to the science of metaphysics? – The notion of being, which is predicable of all beings (God and creatures) in a univocal way.

During a prolific career spanning four decades David Mamet has attained a rare degree of popular and critical success in a wide array of artistic ‘disciplines.’ At the same time, his omnipresence starkly contrasts with the extensive, though mostly one-sided scholarly attention his work has received for over a quarter of a century. Indeed, only a small fraction of the secondary literature addresses the interrelations between these various ventures, and if so with but limited theorizing involved. Therefore the present study aspires to fill a gap in the extant Mamet-criticism by confronting the findings of close readings with a progressive, yet non-causal argument ‘disciplined’ by the interplay of concept and object. It is believed that without such in-built reassessments little justice can be done to the meandering quality of David Mamet’s work, not to mention its wider artistic implications.
For the very reason that artwork, medium, and meaning are inextricably entwined, mediation and perception constitute two sides of one and the same cognitive coin. In the postmodern context of a cultural complex where fields or ‘disciplines’ hybridize and distinctions crumble, where the last remnants of ‘truth’ are assaulted from within, and where methods increasingly admit to their own powerlessness, a semiological perspective inspired by the heuristic qualities of the analogy-principle allows for ‘functional,’ though non-reductive readings of the necessarily elusive means of ‘meaning making.’ After all, with so many communicative media to be covered, a common denominator imposes itself. The product of intuitive associations, analogies are ‘scandalous’ semiotic phenomena capable of integrating an unlimited number of signifying systems. Hence the semiotic excess generated by the essentially functional interconnection of the different analogical vehicles can be repurposed for epistemological ends.
But since this is first and foremost a critical study of David Mamet’s work across different media and genres, and the elaboration of a semiological model a not so distant second, the primary ‘epistemological’ objective concerns a better understanding of the artist’s chief artistic tenets (Chapter 2). Along the proposed ‘loopish’ feedback model of gradual and reciprocal refinement funnelled by a ‘superobjective,’ to use terminology coined by cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstadter in his I Am A Stange Loop (2007), then, the study’s following main focal point translates as a diachronic take on the technical evolution of the artist’s work, intra- as well as trans-medially (Chapter 3). Once the applied and more media-oriented ‘epistemology is in place, Chapter 4 then (re-) conceptualizes the inter-medial creations, relations, and transfers that inform a significant part of Mamet’s artistic output – once again as part of the overall argument, and as verification of the preceding chapters. Chapter 5, finally, wraps up this ‘semiological spiral’ with an analogously structured reassessment of the study’s various stages: from David Mamet’s aesthetic, through his work’s artistic impact and influences, to its meta-artistic and philosophical relevance for contemporary cultural studies.

"From http://www.mv.helsinki.fi/home/pprasane/:
The dissertation is divided into two main parts: (1) "Problems With Metaphor? Prolegomena for Reading Otherwise", and (2) "Crossing the Troposphere: Paul Celan's Poetry and Poetics at the Limits of Figurality". The first main part consists of five Prolegomena, each of which can be read separately. The first of these introductory chapters deals with The Second Commandment, or the prohibition of image-making (Bildverbot, as Kant calls it) which is, paradoxically, superceded by another moment, the prohibition of "bowing down and serving them" (i.e. the images that were not to be made in the first place): how can you "bow down and serve" the images, or abstain from doing that, if you obeyed the first moment and did not even make them?

In the centre of the second Prolegomenon is Aristotle's ambivalent relationship with the "natural talent" (euphuia) for using metaphor, and the third Prolegomenon considers Aristotle's heritage among the modern "metaphoricians and metaphysicians", as well as the anti- or countermetaphoricians, such as Paul de Man and Murray Krieger. Prolegomenon IV contains readings of Shakespeare and Emily Dickinson, with a certain critical reference to modern cognitivism. The fifth, concluding Prolegomenon not only serves as a transitory passage to the second main part, namely the essay on Celan, but also contains a central argument with regard to the whole thesis. It is intended not only as a contribution to the understanding of Heidegger's denouncement of the concept of metaphor as a metaphysical concept, but also as an analysis of a certain relation between Heidegger's early lectures on Aristotle and the concept of "being-towards-the end" (Sein zum Ende) in Sein und Zeit, a developent which bears an implicit critical reference to Aristotle's notion of metapherein.

Also many of the chapters in "Part II" can be read as if they were independent articles. For a reader specially interested in Paul Celan's poetry and its "antimetaphoric resistance", I would recommend the chapters entitled "Squalls. A Reading of 'Ein Dröhnen'", and "The Tropic of Circumcision", revolving between the poem "Einem, der vor der Tür stand" and its reading in Jacques Derrida's book Schibboleth - pour Paul Celan."

This study intends to present, analyse and evaluate the fairly divergent interpretations elaborated by experts studying St. Thomas, from the 1930s onwards, with regard to his doctrine of analogy, particularly in the transcendental context of the question
of God. With this purpose in mind, it proceeds in three stages. In the first place, we offer an inventory of the successive positions adopted by St. Thomas on this matter, from the Scriptum to the Summa theologiae. Secondly, we study the theories of analogy of Maurilio
Texeira-Leite Penido, Johann Baptist Metz and Cornelio Fabro, highlighting the very close link between these theories and the respective ontologies of these authors. In this way, we bring out the connection between the way each author understands the Thomasian esse and the way his thought reflects upon analogy. In the third place, we outline the development of the historiographical reconstructions of the problem which have emerged in the time from the end of the Second World War up to our own days. This brief reconstruction provides us with criteria of judgment to undertake a historical and a theoretical evaluation of the three positions investigated in the second part.

Key words: the metaphysics of Thomas Aquinas, the metaphysics of being, analogy, analogy of proportionality and analogy of reference, theological discourse, Maurílio Teixeira-Leite Penido, Johann Baptist Lotz, Cornelio Fabro, George Peter Klubertanz, Bernard Montagnes.