ANALOGIA. – Etymologically (from the Greek ἀνά “above” and λάγος “discourse, reason”), a. suggests the idea of a relation between two terms, and hence of proportion and similarity. As such, it lies at the basis of all our reasoning, which is composed of judgments (comparisons between two ideas), and therefore belongs particularly to the domains of philosophy, theology, and law.
1. A. IN PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY. – Philosophically, a. is an affinity of concepts and terms (logic), founded on the mutual relation of various modes of being (metaphysics). According to the best scholastic thought, the notion of being, which is universal above all, is not predicated in the same way of all things, because each thing differs from every other in content, which is differently graded insofar as it is richer or poorer in being. Therefore, being cannot be predicated of all things univocally (secundum eandem rationem), but only analogically (secundum rationem similem). Two principal forms of a. are usually distinguished: one called attribution, the other proportionality. A. of attribution consists in attributing to two or more subjects a property that formally exists in a subject of a higher order, to which the others are related. For example, health properly belongs to the animal, but is also attributed to medicine and to color, which are causes or signs of health in the animal. A. of proportionality expresses a property that exists in various subjects according to a different proportion; for example, vision is attributed to the eye, to the human intellect, and to the intellect of God, but evidently, despite the similarity, there is a difference between these three modes of seeing. This a. can be expressed mathematically in the following form:
eye : body = intellect : soul
If a property that formally exists in one subject is attributed by transference to another, the a. will be improper or metaphysical proportionality; for example, laughter, proper to man, attributed to a meadow.
In its various forms, a. reveals the innate tendency of the human intellect to unify the multiplicity of the real and logical worlds by apprehending some common characteristic in beings.
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 identical sense, as, for example, “man,” said of all individuals of the human species).
A. therefore consists in attributing to two or more subjects a quality with meanings that are neither wholly identical nor wholly different, but similar according to different degrees and modes. The analogates thus have a common formal character, such as life in the plant, the animal, and the human spirit, but proportionally different according to the mode.
The importance of a. increases in theological questions, especially in the fundamental problem of the value of our knowledge concerning God. As early as the 4th century, this problem was debated in the Eunomian controversy (v. AEZIO) between Eunomius, who reduced the divine attributes to empty words, incapable of expressing a transcendent God in any way, and St. Basil and St. Grego-
ry of Nyssa, who maintained that the concepts we form concerning God are inadequate but neither false nor devoid of meaning.
The question flared up again with greater force at the beginning of scholasticism (11th century), when the Jewish philosopher Moses Maimonides (d. 1204), in the book The Guide of the Perplexed, while emphasizing the incomprehensibility and ineffability of God, adopted a nominalist and agnostic attitude in theology; for him, every divine attribute indicated only a quality caused by God and placed in creatures. Thus: God is good = God is the cause of goodness; but we do not know whether goodness is in God.
St. Thomas grasped the full gravity of the problem and, gathering together the elements scattered here and there throughout the preceding centuries, opened a secure path toward its solution through a profound study of a. He begins with the Christian concept of creation, according to which God is the first cause of the universe. Between cause and effect there is naturally a connection 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, the similarity between him and the creature cannot be perfect or univocal, but only approximate, that is, analogical. The infinite perfection of God, unique and utterly simple, is reflected, however faintly, and in a certain way refracted, in the indefinite range of beings created by his omnipotence. From consideration of creatures, the human intellect legitimately rises to affirm not only the existence of God but also something of his inner essence, of which creatures are a distant imitation.
By this route those concepts are formed that constitute the divine attributes (goodness, wisdom, justice, etc.) and that imperfectly express the nature of God, just as created beings imperfectly represent II. The attributes, therefore, although inadequate, possess 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 Thomistic doctrine, the a. of our knowledge concerning the divine perfections may be reduced to the following fundamental points:
1. There is a relation of similarity, founded on causality, between the Creator and creatures, by virtue of which we can in some way know God through created nature.
2. The best expression of this relation is not properly mathematical proportionality, that is,
quantitative, such as \(\frac{8}{4} = \frac{4}{2}\), but metaphysical, that is, entitative, such as \(\frac{\mathrm{GOD}}{\mathrm{attributes}} = \frac{\mathrm{creature}}{\mathrm{properties}}\).
3. The divine attribute expresses a property formally common to God and creatures, but different in its mode of being, because whereas in the creature the property is distinct from the essence and is therefore participated and limited, in God every property is identified with the essence and therefore exists in it infinitely.
4. Not all properties of creatures can be attributed to God, because some, such as extension, are incompatible with his nature as Pure Act. There are properties whose formal concept includes no imperfections, such as goodness: these are formally attributed to God, but in a manner higher than in creatures. There are also properties that include imperfections, such as life and cognition, and
these are attributed to God only after being purified of every trace of imperfection.
Therefore, theological language, on the basis of the laws of a., expresses the divine essence either by way of negation, when it removes from God some created property that implies imperfection; or by way of affirmation, when it attributes to God a positive property 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 exists in God. We thus have the following 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, not in the same way as the creature);
God is supremely wise (in a manner infinitely superior to creatures).
Thus the Christian doctrine of a., by eliminating agnosticism and anthropomorphism, gives due value to human knowledge concerning God, while also marking its limits in the face of divine transcendence.
2. L'A. NEL DIRITTO. - Riferita al campo giuridico, l'a. altro non è se non uno strumento logico che serve a supplire alle insufficienze della legge; e si risolve in un procedimento per il quale, «in mancanza di una qualsiasi disposizione di legge intorno ad una controversia, l'interprete ricorre alle disposizioni che regolano casi simili al caso in controversia, e a questo le applica» (R. De Ruggiero, s. V. in Dizionario pratico del diritto privato, pp. 603-607 [V. LACUNE DELLA LEGGE]). Dispone al riguardo l'art. 12, cpv., delle disposizioni preliminari del Codice civile italiano: «Se una controversia non può essere decisa con una precisa disposizione di legge, si ha riguardo alle disposizioni che regolano casi simili o materie analoghe; se il caso rimane dubbio, si decide secondo i principi generali dell'ordinamento giuridico dello Stato». Ed il can. 20 del 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».
Affinché l'interprete possa ricorrere al procedimento analogico, è dunque necessario il concorso di tre condizioni: a) l'esistenza di una vera e propria lacuna legislativa, quanto dire che il caso controverso da decidere non sia stato preveduto né esplicitamente né implicitamente dal legislatore; b) la somiglianza del caso non disciplinato con quello disciplinato dalla legge; c) la mancanza di espressa volontà da parte del legislatore di colmare mediante l'a. la lacuna legislativa.
È da osservare che sull'esistenza della prima condizione si fonda la sostanziale differenza tra a. e interpre-
tazione estensiva: mentre questa mira alla pura e semplice ricostruzione della volontà del legislatore, l'a. tende a colmare una vera e propria lacuna legislativa; ond'è che impropria appare l'espressione «interpretazione analogica», usata da alcuni. La distinzione tra interpretazione estensiva e a. fa capo altresì alla seconda condizione, in quanto se il caso non preveduto, anziché simile a quello preveduto, fosse ad esso uguale, gli si dovrebbe logicamente applicare, mediante appunto l'interpretazione estensiva, la norma particolare già contenuta nella legge, non già una diversa; laddove, se fosse del tutto diverso, l'interprete non dovrebbe far ricorso all'a., bensì ai principi generali di diritto o agli altri mezzi contemplati nel citato can. 20 del Codex.
A seconda che l'interprete, nel ricorrere all'a., faccia capo ad una determinata legge, cioè abbia riguardo alle disposizioni che regolano un determinato istituto o un determinato gruppo di istituti, o faccia capo a tutto il complesso del diritto positivo di un dato popolo, cioè si riferisca ai principi generali di una determinata legislazione, si ha analogia legis o analogia iuris. Distinzione, questa, tanto controversa, soprattutto per quel che riguarda i limiti delle due categorie, quanto irrilevante dal punto di vista pratico e teorico.
Non è applicabile il procedimento analogico nelle leggi penali, le quali anzi (cf. can. 19) debbono essere interpretate in modo restrittivo; nelle norme che non possono estendersi per loro intrinseca impossibilità, come le norme eccezionali (diritto singolare); nelle norme fiscali ed in quelle che restringono il libero esercizio dei diritti. In proposito, nel diritto canonico, si richiama il principio contenuto nella XXVIII regula iuris del Liber Sextus di Bonifacio VIII: «Quae a iure communi exorbitant neququam ad consequentiam sunt trahenda». Così non è applicabile l'a. alle leggi penali (cann. 20 e 2219, § 3), alle leggi che stabiliscono irregularitates (can. 983), mentre è controverso se sia ammessa l'interpretazione analogica delle leggi che devono essere interpretate restrittivamente (cf. can. 19). Somma cautela giustamente si consiglia all'interprete nel ricorrere all'a. ove si tratti di norme che sono frutto dell'arbitrium legislatoris e non derivano dalla intima natura delle cose, come alcune norme di diritto processuale, ad es., quelle che stabiliscono termini o determinate formalità (De Ruggiero, op. cit.).