In point of fact, any discussion of analogy only serves to remind us that all we can predicate of God is Goodness, Truth, Fullness of Being, Unity, Beauty, but nothing further. And it can only come up in a culture that already assumes that God is Goodness, Unity, Truth, and Beauty.
Precisely on account of this dramatic impasse, which will lead to its collapse, the analogia entis has less cognitive value than a good metaphor.
3.8. Conclusion
The poetry and prose of the Middle Ages abound in metaphors, while contemporary theory, be it philosophical or poetic and rhetorical, is inadequate to account for this richness. This should not surprise us, as it is a commonplace that the culture of the time frequently shows a dichotomy between theory and practice. The typical example is music, a field in which the doctrinal discussion is extremely abstract, based on Pythagorean models, relicto aurium iudicio (“setting aside the judgment of the ears”), as Boethius remarked, and as a result deaf to the evolution of musical practice (see Eco 1987 and Dahan 1980: 172). But at least in the case of music there is an explanation, which is, as we mentioned, the weight of the Pythagorean tradition as transmitted by Boethius. Can we find a similar reason in the case of the theory of metaphor?
We can, and it lies in the weight that the commentary on Aristotle’s Categories had throughout medieval doctrinal culture thanks to the mediation of Porphyry.
Let us take another look at what we said in Chapter 1 (section 1.2.1) apropos of the Arbor Porphyriana: that it makes it possible, in other words, to classify, but not to define. In order to define, the tree would have to introduce many more differences than it actually does, or it would have to resolve itself into a network of differences. Every time Aristotle is faced with explaining a metaphor he has recourse to local “ontologies” that are far more flexible than a tree of genera and species.
Now, the doctrinal thought of the Middle Ages is unable to wean itself away from the model provided by the Arbor, and as a consequence, while it can easily understand and justify substitutions from genus to species and vice versa, it finds itself in difficulties when it comes to talking about the multiplicity of properties that enter into play in metaphorical substitutions. It is worth noting that Geoffrey of Vinsauf, who was not a philosopher, was not the only one to point out the need to take into consideration all of the possible properties of an object: philosophers and theologians too, when it came to analyzing a metaphor, were perfectly well aware of what, often peripheral, characteristics formed the basis of the amalgam of the two sememes. But when it came to constructing a theory of metaphorical invention (considering the subtleties they were capable of when discussing problems of logic), they found themselves without a sufficiently flexible semantic model, and they were loath to call into question the canonical model of the Porphyrian tree that had been such an integral part of their intellectual formation.
Why this instinctive reluctance to challenge the world order established by the Arbor Porphyriana? If what we said at the conclusion of Chapter 1 is true, resorting to flexible, even unexplored, “ontologies” to explain metaphorical expressions meant admitting that ontologies, like the Porphyrian tree itself, were practical, provisional tools, and not definitive images of the structure of the world and the Great Chain of Being. And not even the most faithful devotees of Aristotle in those centuries could escape the influence of Neo-Platonism (Thomas Aquinas himself commented not only on Aristotle but also on Dionysius).
To construct or suggest the possibility of an unexpectedly adequate ontology, we do not have to start with the supposition that the universe must always be seen according to a single organizational model according to preordained genera and species. But it was precisely this idea of an “ontological revolution” that could not even cross the mind of a medieval thinker, because their very image of the world was conceived along the model of a stable Arbor Porphyriana.
This helps us understand, I believe, why a historical period so rich in extraordinary metaphors (audaciously proposed by its poets) found itself unable to elaborate a theory of metaphor as an instrument of fresh knowledge.
This is a shorter, edited version of a paper delivered at a seminar at the Scuola Superiore di Studi Umanistici of the University of Bologna in March 2001 in the context of a series of talks on the fortunes of Aristotle’s theory of metaphor. It appeared in Lorusso (2005).
1. “Tropus est dictio translata a propria significatione ad non propriam similitudinem ornatus necessitatisue causa.… Metaphora est rerum uerborumque translatio. Haec fit modis quattuor, ab animali ad animale, ab inanimali ad inanimale, ab animale ad inanimale, ab inanimali ad animale: ab animali ad animale, ut Tiphyn aurigam celeris fecere carinae; nam et auriga et gubernator animam habent: ab inanimali ad inanimale, ut ut pelagus tenuere rates; nam et naues et rates animam non habent: ab animali ad inanimale, ut Atlantis cinctum assidue cui nubibus atris piniferum caput et cetera: nam ut haec animalis sunt, ita mons animam non habet, cui membra hominis ascribuntur: ab inanimali ad animale, ut si tantum pectore robur concipis; nam ut robur animam non habet, sic utique Turnus, cui haec dicuntur, animam habet” (Ars maior III, 6, ed. Holtz, pp. 668–669). “A trope is an expression taken out of its proper meaning to a similar improper one for the purpose of embellishment or necessity.… Metaphor is the transformation of things or words. This takes place in four ways, from the animate to the animate, from the inanimate to the inanimate, from the animate to the inanimate, from the inanimate to the animate—from the animate to the animate, as Tiphyn aurigam celeris fecere carinae [P. Terentius Varro Atacinus, Argonautae]; for both auriga ‘driver’ [or ‘charioteer’: Lewis and Short] and gubernator ‘guider’ [steersman,’ ‘pilot’: Lewis and Short] have souls—from inanimate to inanimate, as ut pelagus tenuere rates (Aeneid 5.8) ‘when the ships gained the deep’; for neither naves ‘ships’ nor rates ‘rafts, ships’ are alive—from animate to inanimate, as Atlantis cinctum assidue cui nubibus atris piniferum caput; (Aeneid 4.248) ‘Atlas, whose pine-wreathed head is always encircled by black clouds,’ for these are animate, mons ‘mountain,’ to which human members are attributed, is not alive—from the inanimate to the animate, as si tantum pectore robur concipis (Aeneid 11.368) ‘if in your heart you nourish such strength,’ since robur ‘strength’ is not alive; likewise also Turnus, to whom these things are said, is a living being” (Trans. Jim Marchand, online at http://www9.georgetown.edu/faculty/jod/texts/donatus.3.english.html).
2. “Allegoria est tropus, quo aliud significatur quam dicitur, ut et iam tempus equum fumantia soluere colla, hoc est ‘carmen finire’… Aenigma est obscura sententia per occultam similitudinem rerum, ut mater me genuit, eadem mox gignitur ex me, cum significet aquam in glaciem concrescere et ex eadem rursus effluere” (“Allegory is a trope, in which one signifies something different from what one says, as in “and now it is time to unyoke the necks of our smoking steeds” (Virgil, Georgics, II, 542), in other words, to finish the poem. An enigma (or riddle) is a proposition that is obscure because of a secret resemblance between things, such as ‘my mother gave birth to me and she will soon be born out of me,’ which means that water is changed into ice and then will flow once again from the ice”) (Ars maior III, 6, ed. Holtz, pp. 671–672).