Best introductions to Aristotle and Thomistic metaphysics

Anyone wishing to master or even gain an elementary acquaintance of Aristotelian thinking or Thomistic metaphysics must begin by learning what amounts to a new language--the language of Aristotle (the teacher of Alexander the Great). In many ways this is analogous to learning the language of computers, where one must learn about "hard drives," "USB ports," "gigabytes," "CD-ROMs," and so forth. In the case of Aristotle and Thomistic metaphysics, you have to become familiar with the vocabulary that includes words like "substance," "accidents," "quality," "relation," "essence," and so forth.

One of the best and most painless introductions to this Aristotelian language is Mortimer Adler's popular classic, Aristotle for Everybody: Difficult Thought Made Easy. Adler follows the divisions of learning found in Aristotle (theoretical, practical, and productive) and divides up his book into corresponding parts, beginning in reverse order with the most easily accessible and progressing to the more difficult: (1) making, (2) doing, (3) knowing. Adler is exceptionally gifted at simplifying difficult concepts, and makes use of extensive practical illustrations which bring Aristotle's concepts readily to life. He also appends an annotated bibliography guiding the reader where to find specific passages in Aristotle's writings catalogued by topic.

When it comes to Thomistic metaphysics, one of the best introductions is Peter Kreeft's annotated anthology of St. Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologiae, entitled A Summa of the Summa: The Essential Philosophical Passages of st Thomas Aquinas Summa Theologica Edited and Explained for Beginners. Kreeft's footnotes are invaluable for the beginner in St. Thomas Aquinas's writings. Of course, there are numerous commentaries and synopses of St. Thomas's philosophy and theology available. Among the best are G. K. Chesterton's classic, Saint Thomas Aquinas: The Dumb Ox. The "Dumb Ox" is not intended as a slur on St. Thomas but refers to the biographical facts of St. Thomas's shyness and portliness as a student, when he acquired the sobriquet, or nickname. Chesterton's book is remarkably well written and insightful. Also good is Josef Pieper's Guide to Thomas Aquinas, as well as Etienne Gilson's more scholarly and excellent study, The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas.

Anyone wishing to make their way thence into the deeper waters of metaphysics proper would do well to start with the clear and indispensably important introductions by Etienne Gilson, Being and Some Philosophers and The Unity of Philosophical Experience. The author is clearer than any other writers to be found in English, and will prevent the reader from chasing down blind alleys and undue confusion. Gilson also offers constant reference to the historical development of metaphysical ideas, which helps to furnish the rationale for the development of various concepts in their original context. Also excellent is the work of Gilson's pupil, Joseph Owen, An Elementary Christian Metaphysics, which is neither elementary nor "Christian" except in the sense that the metaphysical concepts are employed, among other things, in application to the Christian theology of God. Owens' detailed historical footnotes are invaluable for intermediate and advanced students. Those who would profit from a discussion by a philosopher equally acquainted with classic Aristotelian-Thomistic metaphysics and contemporary physics may enjoy reading Means to Message: A Treatise on Truth by Stanley L. Jaki, a Hungarian-born Catholic priest of the Benedictine Order who has doctorates in both philosophy and physics, the author of almost forty books on philosophy and science, and the recipient of the Lecomte du Nouy Prize for 1970 and of the Templeton Prize for 1987, and was invited to give the prestigous Gifford Lectures in Edinburgh in both 1975 and 1976, as well as the Fremantle Lectures at Oxford in 1977. His books may be purchased at a discount directly from the author at

Rev. Stanley L. Jaki
P.O. Box 167
Princeton, NJ 08542-0167
Tel. 609-896-3979 (call around 8 pm.)

A full catalog of Dr. Jaki's books is available online at his homepage, and his books may also be purchased through his major distributor at Real View Books Shipping Office.

The Matrix, and faith that the world is more than five minutes old

Interlocutor:

You'll recall that for the guy who wanted to be put BACK into the Matrix that the beef and the red-dress woman were real enough. What was really real wasn't relevant to him. Sadly, knowing the beef is real might mean that in reality it's just moldering, fatty hamburger. Knowing the woman is real might mean knowing that you had too much to drink the night you thought she was pretty or that her dress was red.

Blosser:

True. The philosophically relevant point is that not caring about existence, but only for essence (actually accidents of taste and appearances of the womanish phenomenon in what looks like the red dress) corresponds to "essentialism," while caring about being corresponds not only to "existentialism" but the classical metaphysical position of, say, Thomas Aquinas, that the principal features of reality are "esse," "act" and "perfection."

While it may be true for Kant that "being" isn't a "real predicate," and therefore can't be a content of simple apprehension (the first act of the mind), nevertheless it's also true that we apprehend things as "existing" in our everyday acts of judgment (the second act of the mind) in a complex synthesis of a formal (non-material) judgment that things either exist or don't: like "I'll take the real $100 over the imaginary $100 dollars, please."

Interlocutor:

I suspect G.K. Chesterson, were he pressed on the issue, would have to concede that there's faith and then there's faith. There's the faith that, based on one's past experiences, one can reasonably predict future happenings, such as the daily rising of the sun or that roses will continue to smell like roses. Then there's axiomatic Faith which needs no independent verification because it is, definitionally, a matter of faith. To confuse the two, in my humble opinion, is bad epistemology.

Blosser:

If I understand you correctly, you're distinguishing between what is (1) evidentially probable and (2) matters of blind faith-- the former having some sort of basis in empirical facticity, the latter none.

I am impressed that anyone whose seen and thought about the Matrix as you certainly must have would think the matter so simple. As my favorite atheist Bertrand Russell
points out, for example, how do we know that the world did not come into existence
five minutes ago with all the appearance it now has of age? Is there any piece of
factual empirical data that you could point to that would make it any more probable
than not that the world did so?

Of course, like you I think it's perfectly "reasonable" to believe that the world has had a long history, that memory is generally reliable, that the deliverances of our sense experience are generally reliable, that we have minds, that we have free will, and so forth. But I don't for a moment suppose that any of these things can be known apart from something very much like faith or trust-- of the sort that would utterly confound anyone who tried to demonstrate these things to a Humean skepic.

You might enjoy reading a chapter called "The Suicide of Thought" by Chesterton in his delightful little booklet for closet atheists entitled Orthodoxy. It's hilarious.

Interlocutor:

I never said either faith or knowing were so simple. When you assert that by Faith (using the big "F" to denote religious faith) I mean "blind faith," you are making a subtle two-pronged argument, which respectfully both miss my point.

Prong 1) Infer and imply that TC has argued that all Faith equals the sort of faith that is blind and irrational and generally unsupported by anything other than stubbornness or ignorance.

But this characterization misses the fact that I concede and even applauded the fact that that for many people Faith is rarely blind and unsupported. Instead, it comes from having a feeling in your gut (your soul?) that this thing is correct. Faith very often comes from an experience - real or perceived - of God. I am not in a position to evaluate what this experience is or its validity in individual people, but I acknowledge that it is there.

What I won't accept, however, is the proposition that this basis in experience is somehow a self-evident axiom upon which all sorts of logical conclusions can be reached. All too often, such a view leads people down the primrose path of moral and spiritual certainty by which they unknowingly fall in to ignorant and narcissistic condescension. It's one thing to poo-poo moral relativism; it's quite another to lay the down the full of canon of Natural Law. Speaking of which, has the Church articulated all of the rules that comprise Natural Law yet?

Blosser:

Fair enough. Several things here. Though I haven't the time for it now, your characterization of Faith calls for some sorting out. First, I would want to distinguish (a bit differently than you do) between "faith" (as a subjective act) and "Faith" (as an objective content, usually of the Christian Faith). Second, I would want to define "faith" in God as an act of "intellectual assent" in which the will is moved not by an intellectual object (as in "knowledge") but by God's grace, making faith a supernatural gift rather than a natural achievement. Third, one would have to distinguish between such religious "faith" and other acts of "belief" in which one's assent is moved by an act of will (such as trust in one's wife or friends, or the proposition that the world is more than 5 minutes old), etc. Fourth, though I do not doubt that the religious convictions of people may rest to some extent on some sort of "gut feeling" (or feeling of "certitude"), or even that this feeling may be one of the by-products of faith, but I would not want to argue (and I'm not claiming that you do) that this constitutes the only basis for such convictions or that a "self-evident axiom upon which all sorts of logical conclusions can be reached." Fifth, I would want to distinguish from the subjective act of "faith" the objective appeal of rational arguments that may be adduced in support of The Faith (only the latter constitute a basis for "intellectual conclusions"). Sixth, I would want to stress that "knowledge" and "rational proof" are person-relative and situational, and that most of what we reasonably claim to "know" we could not conclusively demonstrate that we know to a sufficiently tenacious skeptic. Seventh, no, the Church has not made any declarations laying out the content of Natural Law since it is not an article of faith and no part of Church dogma.

Interlocutor:

The very point of Faith and faith (meaning faith in sensory perceptions) is that an experience - a knowing - is incomplete. By themselves, Faith and faith are just bridges between what we think we know and what is. If a thing is experienced and understood in its entirety - putting the limits of sensory perception aside for now - then Faith and faith are no longer necessary. If Faith and faith change, then in both cases it is because what they are bridging has changed.

Blosser:

Agreed. I would add that there is very little that we could be said to understand in its entirety, and that confidence in reason (our faculty for making sense of experience) is itself a matter of some sort of faith.

Interlocutor:

But what I was getting at in my last email when I used the term "axiomatic Faith" was that all too often people are unwilling to allow Faith to be changed in light of new information, even though they allow faith to regularly be changed by new perceptions. The only way I could account for this difference is that Faith must be, to some extent, a matter of belief and knowing that is beyond mere sensory experience. It's a matter of faith.

Blosser:

I agree that this is true not only of many groups of people of religious faith, but also of many groups of people unwilling to allow their political convictions to be changed in light of new information, for example. Or, for that matter, the excessive and nearly "axiomatic" confidence the public seems too often to repose in television and the western media. Here I love Alasdair MacIntyre's reference to "the readership of the NEW YORK TIMES, or at least to that part of it which shares the presuppositions of those who write that parish magazine of affluent and self-congratulatory liberal enlightenment ...." (Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, p. 5).

Interlocutor:

Prong 2: Conclude that because even the simplest of "evidentially probable" events can't be known in an absolute sense that Faith, as a way of knowing, is perfectly valid. In other words, because you can't prove that the world wasn't created five minutes ago my Faith is valid.

Blosser:

Why should one believe that I make such an inference? Isn't the import of what I wrote here simply that a probabilistic argument is never more than a probabilistic argument? I don't see (any more than you) how the fact that one can't furnish conclusive arguments for conclusions in one sphere would make the conclusions of another sphere (where one similarly can't furnish conclusive arguments) any more intellectually credible. It simply shows that the situations are similar, does it not? Namely, that many things we reasonably believe cannot be supported by conclusive argument. The Matrix comes to mind, as a possible film for a future course in philosophy and film.

Interlocutor:

The problem with this prong is that a lack of absolute certainty about sense perceptions in no way bolsters arguments about Faith. To crib from Aristotle, ordinary sensory perceptions really only deal with everyday events which occur lower down the chain of being. Faith , on the other hand, has always claimed to be about things higher up the chain. The two really should be unrelated, except to the extent that a person claims sense perceptions as basis for Faith, in which case they may very well be talking about something other than mundane perceptions.

Blosser:

Your first sentence is answered by my foregoing paragraph. As to the distinction between the realm of senses and the realm of religious faith, I would say this: while it's true that physical sensation is one thing and the intellectual assent involved in faith is another, I would not want to say they are unrelated. It is an act of faith, for example, to believe that your sensations offer access to a real external world at all, is it not? Like the religious faith, trusting the deliverances of our senses involves an intellectual assent that involves an act of will, does it not?

Interlocutor:

I'm reading an interesting passage in Thomas Merton's Zen and the Birds of Appetite that somewhat addresses this point. From the Zen and Buddhist points of view, everyday perceptions - even the perceptions of one's own thoughts and cravings - are always objects observed by the omnipresent subject "I." Zen cannot be adequately described in subject-object terms because it strives to describe the perception of the world as simply existing, no subjects, no objects. The Zen master does not deny the existence of subject and objects. His experience, however, tells him that this is simply not how the universe is.

Blosser:

Tucker N. Callaway's equasions (in Zen Way--Jesus Way) are to the point as well: for Zen Buddhism, "everything is mind, and mind is no-thing." But isn't that as much an act of willed intellectual assent as believing the world is more than five minutes old or believing in God? I don't see how "experience," as such, teaches us anything. As C.S. Lewis observes in one essay, "Experience by itself proves nothing. If a man doubts whether he is dreaming or waking, no experiment can solve his doubt, since every experiment may itself be part of the dream. Experience proves this, or that, or nothing, according to the preconceptions we bring to it."

Interlocutor:

All I meant by Chesterson having to concede that there's faith and then there's Faith is that the former allows me to wallow around in my day-to-day life, while the latter is my link to the higher parts of the chain of being. In an objectless world, the two would be the same. But I'm no Zen Master. I'm just a due admiring the pretty red dresses.

Blosser:

Well spoken, Sensei!

Metaphor and gender in theological language (continued ...)

[A continued development of the discussion on terms such as "Father," "He" vs. "Godself" in theological language.]

Foster:

After reading [Martin Heidegger's] Sein und Zeit (Being and Time) again, I tend to agree [that his language is turgid]. I also sometimes wonder if Heidegger wasn't pulling a fast one on us all. Does HE even know what he's talking about in S & Z?

Blosser:

Good question.

Foster:

I employ "Godself" because it is standard terminology in the Trinitarian literature I regularly assimilate, plus I believe the nomenclature does full justice to Origen's concept of autotheos.

Blosser:

Well, I suppose as a technical translation of 'autotheos' in Origen studies, it's excusable, at least, if barely. =)

Foster:

My point is that Justin viewed the title "Father" as a "form of address" that humans have coined based on God's benefices and works. Justin indicates that "Father" (as a designation for God) does not imply God is masculine IN SE or immanently: the term "Father" does not tell us anything about God's essence or what God is like AD INTRA.

Blosser:

I agree that it's a form of address, though I wouldn't want to say that it's (merely!) coined by humans. Isn't God the primary cause of His revelation? Also, I'm hesitant to say that this doesn't reflect in some way on God's nature in the following sense: even if we say that God is not masculine IN SE [in Himself], but only in His relationship AD NOS [to us], why is it that we do NOT say that He is feminine AD NOS? There must be a reason. What's the status of that reason? That's what I would want to explore.

Foster:

I, as one of Jehovah's Witnesses, have no problem with believing God has a proper name (NOMEN PROPRIUM). Isa 42:8 suggests that YHWH is God's proper designation and so does Ps 83:18 along with Exod 3:14-15. This is elementary in Judaism and Christianity. However, Justin does not believe God has a NOMEN PROPRIUM nor does he think that words such as PATHR or PANTOKRATWR are ONOMATA (in the strictest sense). Rather, they are ways in which humans invoke God based on the almighty deity's special and general revelatory works. For Justin, "Father" not only fails to function as a proper noun, it is not even a name, but a form of address that is a product (in part) of human language.
I am now speaking about what Justin believes, not myself.

Blosser:

Fair enough. I would also hesitate to say that he speaks for me at this point.

Foster:

I have no problem calling God YHWH or "Father" or Creator. Nevertheless, with Justin, I too must say (as the Martyr implies) that the Bible writers do not ontolgoize God's gender when they call God "Father." There is nothing being said about God as Godself when one speaks of the Christian deity as "Father," IMHO.

Blosser:

Let's keep Origen out of this. I personally find really offensive the use of "GODSELF" for the reasons mentioned in the earlier email [such as preemption by New Age gnosticism: see book right]. How about "autotheos" if we're talking about Origen's theology, and otherwise, "God Himself"?

As to your assertions, I have utterly no confidence that one can surmise whether or not a biblical author was or was not "ontologizing" anything. Certainly they were not philosophers.

But who knows what they were assuming about God's own nature? Do we have any solid reason for assuming they DIDN'T think of God as masculine, even if that
were mistaken?

Foster:

With Minucius Felix, I'm not denying that God is (in some sense) Father or King or Lord. However, Minucius Felix seems to believe that none of these figures of speech truly tell us what God IS. Take away these designations, Minucius Felix argues, and then one will have a clear portrait of Godself. God may be a Father in a metaphorical sense. This does not mean that God is masculine, however, any more than the metaphorical proposition "Juliet is the sun" indicates Romeo's lover is a gaseous fiery blob of helium and hydrogen located at the center of our solar system. In other words, the proposition concerning Juliet doesn't tell us a thing about her ontology or secondary substance.

Blosser:

Doesn't it? Does it tell us only about Romeo's perception of Julia? Or does it not tell us also something about her. If I say Julia is "bright" like the sun, as opposed to "dark," couldn't this tell us that she's not gloomy and moody but cheerful and positive? Just a question.

Foster:

If what Schoonenberg says is true though, one cannot legitimately reason from God's soi-di-sant fatherhood to human fatherhood. The philosopher or natural theologian must reason from the divine economy to the divine being, from the phenomenal to the noumenal realm.

Blosser:

With all the due qualifications about God being the ultimate initiator of communication to man, via Revelation, etc. Speaking of man's taking the initiative in seeking God, Lewis says, is like speaking about the mouse's search for the cat.

Metaphor and gender in theological language

In the continued discussion on metaphor between the doctoral candidate at Glasgow University (Edgar Foster) and myself, we turn to questions of linguistic simplicity vs. turgidity, then to question of gender in theological language (e.g., calling God "Father," "Him," vs. "Godself," etc.):

Foster:

Your suggestion regarding simplicity is well taken. The apostle Paul also indicated that speech not easily understood is akin to enunciating or articulating in the air (ESESQE GAR EIS AERA LALOUNTES). On the other hand, I recall reading about Etienne Gilson (pictured left) being moved to tears by a speech that Martin Heidegger gave. But since I don't want old ladies to be perplexed nor French guys to be extremely moved (VALDE COMMOTUS)--I'll simplify my presentation. :-)

Blosser:

Perhaps Gilson was moved to tears because of Heidegger's unutterably turgid teutonic unintelligibility.

Foster:

I don't want to suggest that "metaphors" such as the divine title "Father" are strictly arbitrary. Nevertheless, like Justin the Martyr (right) and Minucius Felix, I believe such terms aptly delineate God's functions but not what God is in Godself. We evidently derive terms like "Father" or "King" from both general and special revelation. Justin writes:

"But to the Father of all, who is unbegotten, there is no name given. For by whatever name He be called, He has as His elder the person who gives Him the name. But these words Father, and God, and Creator, and Lord, and Master, are not names, but appellations derived from His good deeds and functions" (2 Apology 6).

Blosser:

My friend, for the life of my I cannon understand how you can stomach using "words" (I use the term lightly) like "Godself." The only people besides you whom I know who use that "word" (and others like it) are dissident Catholics under the influence of prevailing "PC" and Femi-Nazi ideologies. Whatever your rationale, it has all the appearance IMHO of something analogous to trying to Christianize the profession of prostitution.

I'm not sure what your point with Justin is beyond the obvious fact that "God" as usually understood in English is not proper name. Orthodox Jews, of course, believe that God does have a proper name, which they won't pronounce, and therefore won't even write out the English word "God" but only "G-d," since they take it to symbolically stand in the place of His holy name, YHWH, to which they refer with the word "Ha-Shem" ("the name"). I don't know what they'd say about Justin's comments. They might simply say God names Himself.

But why not simply refer to God as He refers to Himself in His inscripturated Word? Why try to finesse that?

Foster:

Minucius Felix reasons:

"If I were to call Him [i.e. God] Father, you would judge Him to be earthly; if a King, you would suspect Him to be carnal; if a Lord, you will certainly understand Him to he mortal. Take away the additions of names, and you will behold His glory" (Octavius 18).

Blosser:

All of these make good points, of course, but should hardly be seen as decisive reasons for denying that God is Father, King, Lord, etc., for He reveals Himself to be all those. But I know you'd agree in some sense, and I'm not making any really contrarian point.

Foster:

A modern voice [Piet Schoonenberg] states:

"All our thinking moves from the world to God, and can never move in the opposite direction."

I tend to agree, with qualifications, of course.

Blosser:

Ditto. Just as Thomas would.

Foster:

Max Black's notion of "associated commonplaces" could well explain why some metaphors are more fitting than others. The account given by Kevin Vanhoozer (pictured right) of speech-act theory might also explain why the Christian deity is generally addressed as "Father" rather than mother or why Christ is the "Lamb" rather than the "Piggy" of God. I know you're familiar with Saussure's distinction between LANGUE and PAROLE or John Searle's distinction between brute facts, institutional facts and constitutive rules. Vanhoozer presses these distinctions into service when he develops his own take on illocution and perlocution. See Is There a Meaning in This Text? (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, Publishing Company, 1998).

Biblical metaphor and the "ontologization of gender"

Foster:

My basic question [is] whether the "Jerusalem above" mentioned in Gal 4:26, which Thomas Aquinas identifies
with the Church militant (in the first place) and the Church triumpnant (in the second place), is a religious metaphor and, if so, how does Paul's speech function metaphorically. If Paul's words are not to be taken metaphorically, why not?

What difference would it make? Well, I am trying to see if viewing "Jerusalem above" as a metaphorical "mother" will shed any light on what we as Christians might mean when we address God as "Father." It appears to me that in both cases, "ontologization of gender" is or should be intended. Calling God "Father" does not address what He is immanently. It only has reference to what He is QUOAD NOS or PRO NOBIS.

Blosser:

I take it you intend "immanently" in the second-to-the-last sentence above as meaning "within God Him-self."

The key to this sort of business, where you're drawing a sort of boundary like Kant drew between that which is phenomenal (and apparant to us) and that which is noumenal (and lies beyond us), I should think, lies in whether or not we can sort out how metaphor can mean anything at all without meaning anything in God Himself. My hunch is that in many cases it may be mistaken to say that the metaphor means something only for us and not for God in Himself, because that may end up making the metaphor rather arbitrary.

My own approach to trying to answer this sort of problem would be to follow Wolterstorff's suggestions about objective qualities in things that make them
appropriate or inappropriate (fitting or unfitting) to serve as metaphors, via his notions of relative cross-modal similarity. Thus there are objective reasons why
"Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world" is appropriately imputed to Jesus while "Behold the Piggy of God who takes away the sin of the world"
isn't. Etc.

More on metaphor

Foster:

I've made use of Ricoeur in my research and I'm also gonna get my hands on the work by Sokolowski which you reviewed. I read his intro to phenomenology recently and really enjoyed it. He also had a little something to say about metaphor in that work. Moreover, I learned what a dative of manifestation or disclosure is, by reading his intro.

Blosser:

His works are consistently substantial. Check out his numerous other titles as well.

Foster:

I like that nomenclature--ambiguous identity synthesis! If I decide to employ it in my dissertation, I'll give you due credit for introducing me to the expression. :-)

Blosser:

I need all the credit I can get!

Foster:

Concerning "meaning creation," if you have not done so already, you might enjoy perusing what Max Black has written, here and there, regarding the Tenor and Vehicle of a metaphorical construction creating meaning through Tenor-Vehicle interaction.

Black contends that metaphors such as 'man is a wolf' do not create meaning by means of the lexical definitions for "man" or "wolf." Meaning is primarily created via the qualities that those hearing the metaphor associate with a wolf, in this case. The
soi-di-sant "associated commonplaces" that metaphors evoke do not have to be true, only capable of being readily evoked (according to Black).

Blosser:

Sounds interesting and promising. Thanks for the tip on Mr. Black.

Foster:

Walter Kasper also writes that metaphors and similes "offer a new and creative description of reality" by combining "a dialectic of the familiar and the strange." I agree with what you also observe regarding "God the Father." The literature I've been reading calls these constructions "dead metaphors."

Blosser:

Yes, dead metaphors, as in the "foot of the mountain," or the "leg of the table." We don't even think of them as metaphors anymore.

Foster:

Have I hugged my "teddy bear" today? No, cause I don't think I still got one.

Seriously, [on the metaphor issue ...] What made Jesus suggest there was something similar between Herod and a fox? What made Bill Shakespeare perceive some type of similarity between the world and a stage? These are questions that metaphorologists seem to tackle often and they usually come up with sundry and disparate answers to such queries.

Blosser:

Fascinating business. Thomas Howard's book, Chance, or the Dance? is wonderful on the metaphor issue, particularly with examples, though not in a typical "scholarly" context--for the better, in my opinion!

Foster:

I love Hannah Arendt's treatment of this topic in The Life of the Mind. Based on her reading of Aristotle and Kant, Arendt prefers to define "metaphor" as "the transition from one existential state, that of thinking, to another, that of being an appearance among appearances." That is, metaphors make concealed thought exposed, bringing it out into the open to be
observed. One uttering a metaphor thus putatively makes the existential transition from the notional state to the empirical state by positing analogies in relation to one another, such that A is to B as C is to D ("e.g. Juliet is the sun").

Metaphor

Edgar Foster, currently writing a dissertation on the patristics, offers the two following paragraphs on Lactantius and the question of metaphor from the current draft of his dissertation. He also appends some observations by Ralph Earle. Foster:

Modern-day metaphorologists have developed terminology that attempts to clarify descriptive discourse concerning metaphorical utterances. For example, I.A. Richards introduced the nomenclature 'Tenor' and 'Vehicle' to metaphor theory in 1936. Tenor refers to the 'principal subject' in a metaphorical construction, Vehicle to the 'subsidiary subject' or concept that further describes the Tenor. Therefore, in the proposition 'God is the Father of Jesus Christ,' the constituent 'God' functions as the Tenor while 'Father' is the Vehicle. Of course, the Tenor-Vehicle method is limited. Yet, it has produced much fruitage in cognitive research.

Blosser:

I haven't researched as much as I'd like in the "serious" scholarship about metaphor, though I have some of it on my shelves, such as Ricoeur's study, and the work of Sokolowski's that I've recently reviewed. Phenomenologically, a metaphor is sometimes called an "ambiguous identity synthesis," and there are some fascinating features of it that can be isolated and analyzed, though the overall feature of metaphor that fascinates me is the way in which it seems to be a locus of meaning creation--one that Amy is particularly good at and which makes conversations with her particularly delightful. To work effectively, metaphor often seems to require a certain degree of strangeness or novelty; otherwise they become "unthinking" metaphors, like "God the Father," instead of delightfully engaging metaphors, like "Edgar the Teddy Bear" (Have you hugged yours today?).

Foster:

Another important expression in modern metaphor theory is 'point of similarity,' or common domain factor, which refers to the intended focal point of a metaphorical utterance. To illustrate how the point of similarity differs from the Tenor or Vehicle, we can turn to the Sermon on the Mount. While recounting that famous discourse, Matthew records Jesus of Nazareth employing a metaphor wherein Jesus describes his disciples thus: 'You are the salt of the earth' (Mt 5:13). In this passage, the disciples are the Tenor, the Vehicle is 'salt' and the point of similarity (i.e. common domain factor) is evidently the preservative quality of salt and possibly its potential to accentuate the taste of food. In other words, just as salt may function as a preservative or enhance the taste of food, making it more palatable for consumption (Job 6:6; Col 4:6), so the disciples of Jesus (it would seem) are to preserve human lives by means of the Gospel and utter words of graciousness to both Christians and non-Christians alike. Regardless of what Jesus' intended-speaker meaning in Mt 5:13 is, his words illustrate the three distinctions (tenor, vehicle and point of similarity) that metaphor theorists commonly implement."

Blosser:

Fascinating. Another thing I've recently become interested in, though I forget to whom I've talked about this and may therefore be indulging your patience (!), is the connections between metaphor and what Wolterstorff (Art in Action, remember?) means by "fittingness" as "cross-modal similarity." Intra-modal similarity is similarity with respect to one modality-- say, speed, where you are comparing two cars: so the similarity is with respect to speed. Cross-modal similarity is where two things are being compared in different modalities (like color and heat in the metaphor "Red is a hot color") with respect to something else-- potency, preference, or--as in this case--activity. I'm not sure if Osgood's studies of the 1950s get at the root of all the relevant issues here, but the ability to compare ping and pong with ice cream and warm pea soup seems to me to involved a kind of "ambiguous identity synthesis" similar to that involved in metaphor. What is it, for example, that makes it fitting to suggest that there is something similar between Edgar and a Teddy Bear? The possibilities are delightfully endless here, and the surplus of meaning grows exponentially with brainstorming.

Foster:

From Ralph Earle's Word Meanings in the NT:

"In the Greek comic writers the verb ARTUW, 'season,' referred to the seasoning with the salt of wit. But too often this degenerated into off-color jokes. Paul says that the Christian's speech should be 'with grace' or 'gracious'" (p. 362).

"Let your conversation be always gracious, and never insipid; study how best to talk with each person you meet" (Col 4:6 NEB).

Blosser:

I say we season our speech not only with that which is 'gracious', but that which exhibits "ambiguous identity syntheses" that are delightful and charming with respect to their cross-modal similarities.