Analogy

ANALOGY. - Etymologically (from the Greek ἀνά "above" and λόγος "discourse, reason") analogy suggests the idea of a relation between two terms, hence of proportion and of similarity. As such it is the foundation of all our reasoning, which is composed of judgments (comparisons between two ideas), and therefore belongs in a particular way to the domain of philosophy, theology and law.

1. ANALOGY IN PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY

Philosophically, analogy is an affinity of concepts and terms (logic), founded on the mutual relation of various modes of being (metaphysics). According to the best Scholasticism, the notion of being, the most universal of all, is not attributed in the same way to all things, because each thing differs from another in content, which is graduated differently insofar as it is more or less rich in being. Therefore being cannot be attributed to all things univocally (secundum eandem rationem), but only analogically (secundum rationem similem). Two principal forms of analogy are customarily distinguished: one called of attribution, the other of proportionality. The analogy of attribution consists in attributing to two or more subjects a property that is formally present in a subject of a higher order, with which the others have a relation. For example, health belongs properly to the animal, but it is also attributed to medicine and to complexion, which are the cause or the sign of health in the animal. The analogy of proportionality expresses a property that is present in various subjects according to a different proportion; for example, vision is attributed to the eye, to the human intellect, to the intellect of God, but evidently, despite the similarity, there is a difference among these three modes of seeing. This analogy can be translated into mathematical form as follows: eye : body = intellect : soul

If a property that is formally present in one subject is attributed by a transferred sense to another, the analogy will be of improper or metaphysical proportionality; for example, laughter, proper to man, attributed to the meadow.

In its various forms analogy reveals the innate tendency of the human intellect to unify the multiplicity of the real world and of the logical world, grasping in beings some common note.

It oscillates between equivocity (one and the same term attributed to two subjects in two entirely different senses, as for example "scorpion," said of an animal and of a constellation) and univocity (one and the same term attributed to several subjects in an absolutely single sense, as for example "man," said of all individuals of the human species).

Analogy thus consists in attributing to two or more subjects a quality with meanings neither entirely identical nor entirely different, but similar according to a different degree and mode. The analogates therefore have a common formal reason, as life in the plant, in the animal, in the human spirit, but proportionally different according to the mode.

The importance of analogy increases in theological questions, especially in the fundamental problem of the value of our cognition concerning God. As early as the 4th century this problem was agitated in the Eunomian controversy (v. AEZIO) between Eunomius, who reduced the divine attributes to empty words, incapable of expressing in any way a transcendent God, and St. Basil and St. Gregory of Nyssa, who maintained that the concepts we form concerning God are inadequate but neither false nor empty of meaning.

The question flared up again more strongly at the beginning of Scholasticism (11th century), when the Jewish philosopher Moses Maimonides (d. 1204), in the book The Guide of the Perplexed, exalting the incomprehensibility and ineffability of God, assumed a nominalistic and agnostic attitude in theology; for him every divine attribute indicated only a quality caused by God and placed in creatures. Therefore: God is good = God is the cause of goodness; but we do not know whether goodness is in God.

St. Thomas perceived the full gravity of the problem and, gathering the elements scattered here and there in the preceding centuries, opened a sure path to its solution with an in-depth study of analogy. He starts from the Christian concept of creation, according to which God is the first cause of the universe. Between cause and effect there is naturally a bond of similarity, which in creatures has a generic and specific character and therefore follows the line of univocity, as for example between father and son. But since God infinitely transcends all creation with its genera and species, between him and the creature the similarity cannot be perfect, univocal, but approximate, that is, analogical. The infinite perfection of God, unique and utterly simple, is reflected, albeit faintly, and is refracted in a certain way in the indefinite range of beings created by his omnipotence. The human intellect, from the consideration of creatures, legitimately rises to affirm not only the existence of God, but also something of his intimate essence, of which creatures are a distant imitation.

In this way those concepts are formed that constitute the divine attributes (goodness, wisdom, justice, etc.) and that express imperfectly the nature of God, as created beings imperfectly represent it. The attributes therefore, although inadequate, have their value, because they signify qualities that are truly found in creatures and in God according to different proportions (v. ATTRIBUTI DIVINI).

In the light of the Thomistic doctrine, the analogy of our cognition concerning the divine perfections can be reduced to these main points:

1. There is a relation of similarity, founded on causality, between the Creator and creatures, by virtue of which we can know God in some way through created nature.

2. The best expression of this relation is proportionality not properly mathematical, that is, quantitative, as frac{8}{4} = frac{4}{2}, but metaphysical, that is, entitative, as frac{GOD}{attributes} = frac{creature}{properties}.

3. The divine attribute expresses a property formally common to God and to creatures, but different in its mode of being, because while in the creature the property is distinguished from the essence and is therefore participated and limited, in God every property is identified with the essence and therefore exists in him in an infinite mode.

4. Not all properties of creatures can be attributed to God, because some, as for example extension, are repugnant to his nature as Pure Act. There are properties that in their formal concept do not include imperfections, such as goodness: and these are attributed formally to God but in a higher mode than to creatures. There are then properties that include imperfections, such as life, cognition, and these are attributed to God only if purified of every shadow of imperfection.

Therefore theological language, on the basis of the laws of analogy, expresses the divine essence either by way of negation, if it removes from God some created property that smacks of imperfection, or by way of affirmation, if it attributes to God a positive property that is found as a perfection in the creature, or by way of eminence, when it corrects the affirmation by distinguishing the mode of being of a property in creatures from the higher mode according to which that same property is in God. There is therefore this gradation:

God is incorporeal (the imperfection of materiality is denied);

God is wise (a property is affirmed as formally present in God);

God is not wise (that is, in the same way as the creature);

God is superswise (in a mode infinitely superior to creatures).

Thus the Christian doctrine of analogy, eliminating agnosticism and anthropomorphism, gives value to human cognition concerning God, but also marks its limits in the face of divine transcendence.

2. THE ANALOGY IN LAW

Referred to the juridical field, analogy is nothing other than a logical instrument that serves to supply the inadequacies of the law; and it resolves itself into a procedure by which, "in the absence of any provision of law concerning a controversy, the interpreter has recourse to the provisions that regulate cases similar to the case in controversy, and applies them to it" (R. De Ruggiero, s. v. in Dizionario pratico del diritto privato, pp. 603-607 [v. LACUNE DELLA LEGGE]). On this point art. 12, second paragraph, of the preliminary provisions of the Italian Civil Code lays down: "If a controversy cannot be decided by a precise provision of law, regard shall be had to the provisions that regulate similar cases or analogous matters; if the case remains doubtful, it shall be decided according to the general principles of the juridical order of the State." And can. 20 of the CIC: "Si certa de re desit expressum praescriptum legis sive generalis sive particularis, norma sumenda est, nisi agatur de poenis applicandis, a legibus latis in similibus; a generalibus iuris principiis cum acquitate canonica servatis; a stylo et praxi Curiae Romanae; a communi constantique sententia doctorum".

For the interpreter to be able to have recourse to the analogical procedure, the concurrence of three conditions is therefore necessary: a) the existence of a true and proper legislative gap, that is to say that the case in dispute to be decided has not been foreseen either explicitly or implicitly by the legislator; b) the similarity of the unregulated case to the one regulated by the law; c) the absence of an express intention on the part of the legislator to fill the legislative gap by means of analogy.

È da osservare che sull'esistenza della prima condizione si fonda la sostanziale differenza tra a. e interpre-

extensive interpretation: whereas the latter aims at the pure and simple reconstruction of the legislator's will, a. tends to fill a true and proper legislative gap; whence the expression "analogical interpretation," used by some, appears improper. The distinction between extensive interpretation and a. also hinges on the second condition, in that if the unforeseen case, rather than being similar to the foreseen one, were equal to it, the particular norm already contained in the law should logically be applied to it, precisely by means of extensive interpretation, and not a different one; whereas, if it were entirely different, the interpreter should have recourse not to a., but rather to the general principles of law or to the other means contemplated in the cited can. 20 of the Codex.

Depending on whether the interpreter, in resorting to analogy, refers to a specific law, that is, has regard to the provisions governing a particular institution or a particular group of institutions, or refers to the entire body of the positive law of a given people, that is, refers to the general principles of a particular legislation, one has analogia legis or analogia iuris. This distinction is as controversial, especially as regards the limits of the two categories, as it is irrelevant from the practical and theoretical point of view.

The analogical procedure is not applicable in penal laws, which on the contrary (cf. can. 19) must be interpreted restrictively; in norms that cannot be extended because of their intrinsic impossibility, such as exceptional norms (singular law); in fiscal norms and in those that restrict the free exercise of rights. In this regard, in canon law, the principle contained in the XXVIII regula iuris of the Liber Sextus of Boniface VIII is invoked: «Quae a iure communi exorbitant neququam ad consequentiam sunt trahenda». Thus analogy is not applicable to penal laws (cann. 20 and 2219, § 3), to laws that establish irregularitates (can. 983), while it is disputed whether the analogical interpretation of laws that must be interpreted restrictively is admitted (cf. can. 19). The greatest caution is rightly advised to the interpreter in resorting to analogy where the norms in question are the product of the legislator's arbitrium and do not derive from the intimate nature of things, such as certain norms of procedural law, for example, those that establish time limits or specific formalities (De Ruggiero, op. cit.).

Pio Fedele