By Schubert Ogden
I should wish to argue that "analogy" has no place in metaphysics strictly so-called if it is used in either of the two senses allowed for by the two-term distinction between "literal" and "nonliteral," i.e., either in the sense in which it is more or less synonymous with "metaphorical" and "symbolic"; or in the quasi-technical sense that Hartshorne tries (unsuccessfully) to give it as distinct both from "literal" terms, on the one hand, and other types of "nonliteral" terms (i.e., metaphorical or symbolic terms), on the other. At the same time, I should wish to say that "analogy" does and must have a place in metaphysics properly so-called when it is understood as it is in the three-term distinction between "univocal," "equivocal," and "analogical."
With all this in mind, I have had occasion to reflect further on Hartshorne's statement, "on both sides, we have something literal, but inadequate, needing to be helped out by the analogy with the other." I take this to mean that, in what is originally given in our existential experience, however "inadequately," is a literal grasp of our own contingent being as such and, in strict correlation therewith, a literal grasp of God's necessary being as such. But, then, if this literal grasp on each side needs to be "helped out" by "the analogy with the other," the analogy appealed to as providing the needed help can only be analogy in the second sense clarified above, by reference to the three-term distinction between "univocal," "equivocal," and "analogical." Why? Because analogy in either of the first two senses clarified simply cannot provide such help: in the one sense, because nonliteral uses of terms, such as metaphor, symbol, and analogy are cognitively significant only insofar as they do not help but are themselves helped by literal uses of terms; and in the other sense, because, as Hartshorne's failure demonstrate, analogy in any such quasi-technical sense cannot possibly be distinguished except verbally from such other nonliteral uses of terms as metaphor and symbol.
What Hartshorne's statement comes down to, then, is that a literal grasp of either side of the--neither univocal nor equivocal, but--analogical contrast between our own contingent being, on the one side, and God's necessary being, on the other, is insofar inadequate unless and until it is "helped out" by a literal grasp of the other side.
11 June 2005