Analogy of Aquinas and its Comparison to Graded Universal

Document Type : علمی پژوهشی

Author

• Ghulām Ḥusayn Tawakkulī

10.22067/philosophy.v40i2.3171

Abstract

Most theologians, either Muslim or Christian, have sought to find a way in which an undersanding, however incomplete, of God
would be possible. The Muslim philosophers have brought up
gradational predicates and Saint Thomas Aquinas maintains that
attributes are analogically attributed to God which is a borderline
between the homonym and the univocal. With reference to
various sources, the present article explicates the viewpoint of
Aquinas in respect to analogy, then compares it with the current viewpoint of the Islamic philosophy, and finally critically reviews and evaluates it. It will further be noticed that the insistence on the subsumption of the analogy under homonym will leave the problem unresolved and understanding the attributes will still remain impossible; however, acceptance of a single meaning and admitting to its firmness and infirmity will not leave much of a difference between the analogy and equivocal predication common in Islamic philosophy.
Keywords: analogy, homonym, univocal, univocal universal, graded universal

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