Preparation for the 3 September 2019 Session

We will continue our review of the first question of St Thomas Aquinas's Quaestiones disputatae de veritate. For our discussion next Tuesday we will only see the next four articles of

Question One

5. Is some truth besides the First Truth eternal?

6. Is created truth immutable? 

7. Is truth as applied to God predicated personally or essentially? 

8. Is every other truth from the First Truth?

Your preparation for this September session consists of reading carefully these articles. Try to follow the internal logic in each of them. You may find it tiring, but it's worth it: your intellect will be working out in a mental gym.

Remember you can access a vast number of St Thomas's works in English (and Latin) on this site compiled by the Dominicans in United States. Have a look, even if only to see all the works of Aquinas they have in the site.

An additional resource for those interested in deepening on analogy is this article from the Maritain centre at the University of Notre Dame: The Logic of Analogy by Ralph McInerny.

And for those wanting to deepen in the thought of St Thomas from a very reliable and didactic source and in sized bits, here is an excellent, highly recommended and free course offered by the Dominicans in Washington DC: Aquinas 101.




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Clarifications to the Discussion on 6 August 2019

Background to the concept of analogy key to understand St Thomas Aquinas:

Analogy stands between equivocality and univocality:

A univocal term has only one possible meaning (no place for confusion, so to speak), eg "entomology".
An equivocal term can mean very different things, for instance "bark" which without any background can equally mean "the outer covering of a tree" or "the short, loud sound made by dogs".
An analogical term is similar (partially the same, partially different) to another.

There were three types of analogy used in the Middle Ages:

1. Analogy of proportionality: for instance "principle" is an analogical term when said of a point and a spring of water because a point is related to a line as a spring is related to a river.

2. Analogy of attribution: eg analogy involved a relation between two things, of which one is primary and the other secondary.

3. Analogy of participation: the most important example here is the analogia entis, the way in which God, an angel, a man, a zebra, a birch and a sapphire "are," though each containing different degrees of being and, in the case of God, being Himself the principle of being, the Ipsum Esse Subsistens.

We could add a fourth one mentioned during our discussion, "improper" analogy or metaphor, ie an analogy in which there is no real basis for similarity. For instance when we say someone is "on fire" we don't mean (hopefully) that flames are consuming that person's clothes, but that he is working or doing something with enthusiasm and energy. Or we can say someone is "a gem" but clearly we don't mean she is a piece of stone, but someone who has lend a very valuable service.

You can read a very nice summary of all these notions by clicking here.




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