Figurative Naming and Names Equivocal by Reason: Synecdoche, Antonomasia, Metonymy, Metaphor, Irony, and the Kept Name

Orientation #

He says he will “leave this little text” on the five figures with references in Thomas, and that “at the end” he will point out a rule of Boethius distinguishing naming equivocally by reason from naming figuratively (not reached in this recording). He says “we talked about the distinction of the roads in our knowledge” earlier, and “as we’ll see later on when we compare the natures of things to numbers.” Verified source: the handout “Reasoning and the Four Kinds of Argument”, p. 2, is read from during this class (probably the enthymeme/example section). The previous class treated the Categories and Porphyry; the next continues equivocal naming by reason (generalization, proportion, metaphor).

The class, in order #

1. Five figures; the name of the name vs. the name of the way of naming (“the meaning of the word is not the meaning of the speaker”) #

Point: a student should master the five most common kinds of figurative naming, and note that some have a name for the name, some for the way of naming, some both.

• Metaphor: both (a name used metaphorically is “a metaphor”). Irony: a way of naming, but he knows no name for a name used ironically. Antonomasia: names the way of naming; a name so used has no name he knows (the dictionary gives a different meaning). Metonymy: the way; metonym: the name. Synecdoche: more the name of the name than of the way.
• Aside on things without names: hunger, thirst, wonder have names, but the desire for sex “doesn’t have a name,” though common; square has a name, equilateral triangle does not. Aristotle says things not in our experience lack names, yet here are common things without names.
• Common to all figurative speech: “the meaning of the speaker is not the meaning of the word.” If the speaker’s meaning became a meaning of the word it would no longer be figurative. Dictionaries mislead here: “pig” given as “glutton” — if that were a meaning of “pig,” calling you a pig would not be figurative. Historically some metaphors become the thing’s own name; then the word functions as its own name, not as metaphor.
• Contrast with equivocation by reason (Boethius’ rule, promised for later): in equivocation by reason the thing often has no name of its own; in figurative naming it already has one but you use another thing’s name.
• Thomas on St Paul’s irony (Corinthians): Paul praises when the reverse is meant, yet says nothing false; an intelligent listener gathers the speaker’s meaning through the words. Thomas contrasts irony and metaphor there. (A student asks whether Berquist’s foreword to the Bible treated this; “maybe… not so much.”)

2. Synecdoche and antonomasia: two kinds of whole and part (“a composed whole in its part”) #

Distinction: synecdoche vs. antonomasia — both give the name of a whole to its part or vice versa, but synecdoche uses the composed (integral) whole, the first meaning of “whole”; antonomasia the general in the particular, i.e. the universal whole. He notes “particular” contains “part,” and the Greek for “general” contains the word for “whole.” Synecdoche examples (part named for whole, the usual direction, or the reverse):

• “The Word was made flesh” = made man; “all flesh must come to thee”; man called “soul” in Scripture. An early heresy denying Christ a human soul (the Word in its place) took the synecdoche non-figuratively.
• Daily life: “he’s a brain” (smart), named for muscles, “the toe” (field-goal kicker who never misses), “the nose” (wine connoisseur who tells grape, country, county). A part that stands out names the whole.
• “Reason more than anything else is man” — a synecdoche. Antonomasia examples (both directions common):
• General for particular: “Christ” means anointed, but names one man because among all anointed (OT kings, priests, prophets) he stands out, anointed with the Holy Spirit (Thomas explains this in several places). “Bible” means book; one book stands out as the Word of God. Peter and Paul called simply “the apostles”; Thomas calls Aristotle “the Philosopher” and Paul “the Apostle.”
• Particular for general: an amorous student is “a Don Juan / Romeo / Casanova” (a famous historical or fictional lover instead of “lover,” the non-figurative name); a hesitant man “a Hamlet”; Dirksen nominating Taft as “Mister Integrity, Mister Republican” — “Bob Taft” is non-figurative; “Mister Baseball.”

3. Metonymy: something of the other (“the name of the container to the contained”) #

Point: in metonymy one thing is not part or whole but “something of the other”; he admits the cases are “a little more obscure,” but gives the two most common in Thomas.

• Container/contained: “a holy place,” “a wicked place” — Thomas: the place is not wicked, the people in it are; “an unhappy age” — the people or events, not the time.
• Cause/effect: Shakespeare puts the cause in a noun and the effect in an adjective or vice versa: “scornful pride” (scorn is the effect of pride), “disgraceful action” (the action leads to disgrace).
• Scripture: “let the earth praise the Lord” — those on the earth, not the earth.

4. Metaphor and irony: likeness and opposite (“taste and see how sweet is the Lord”) #

Distinction: metaphor vs. irony — in metaphor I mean something like what my words mean but not the same; in irony I mean the opposite.

• Metaphor examples: a lover’s “honey,” “sweet”; “pig” (eats too much), “rat” — common to express emotion.
• Thomas on the Psalms, the fullest account of the metaphor “sweet” he has seen: the sweet is (1) pleasing, (2) calming — police quiet a lost, bawling child with an ice cream cone; candy passed back to restless children on a cross-country drive, (3) refreshing — candy bars in factories to keep going. So the beautiful is called sweet (Shakespeare: “your sweet form”; “a sight for sore eyes”; beautiful scenery is “restful”). His own case: studying in a small room of the College of St Thomas library, looking up from tired reading at a big painting — pleasing, restful, refreshing.
• Irony: “gee, you’re nice” to someone mean; his stock example, finding a student drunk under the table on the weekend: “what a fine example of an Assumption College student.” Socrates in the Apology proposes as “punishment” that he be pensioned off — everyone knows it is a reward; so to speak ironically is not to speak falsely (Thomas’s defence of Paul).
• Hyperbole (“I’ve told you a million times,” “I’ll murder you if you do that again”): obviously figurative, maybe like metaphor (many times likened to a large number), maybe a different basis — left open; the five are the ones needed most. In Scripture he finds metonymy and metaphor most, then synecdoche.
• Figures of speech belong properly to rhetoric and poetics; the poet’s glory is in metaphors; rhetoric too: Nixon, “the Democratic programs are retreads”; Pericles, the young men killed in battle are as if spring were taken out of the year.

5. Univocal, equivocal by chance, equivocal by reason (“The word bat is equivocal by chance”) #

Point: set up the vocabulary for names equivocal by reason.

• Univocal: one meaning. Equivocal: more than one. Equivocal by chance (also “purely equivocal”) vs. by reason (some connection among the meanings). He prefers “equivocal by reason” to “analogous,” since “analogous” comes from the Greek for proportion, which is only one way of naming equivocally by reason.
• A name being equivocal vs. being said equivocally: “bat” (wood in baseball / flying mouse) is equivocal by chance, but said of three baseball bats it is said univocally, with one meaning in mind; said of a bat and a flying mouse it is said according to different meanings.
• Method: no one text in Aristotle or Thomas lays this out as universally as he will; this is his own putting together of scattered texts. They make the distinctions relevant to the task at hand; sometimes they lay a whole out universally, sometimes not — as with the “roads of our knowledge,” which he thinks Dionne brought together.

6. Two ways a name becomes equivocal by reason (“kept as its own name by one of two things”) #

Point: taking the simplest case (a name said of two things), a name becomes equivocal by reason either

1. by being kept as its own name by one of the two things of which it is said, while the other gets a new name as its own (the less equivocal way); or
2. by being carried over from one thing to another, the meaning changing but with some connection. He then subdivides the first way into two.

7. First subdivision: the one that adds something noteworthy gets the new name (“Four fingers and a thumb”) #

Point: the common name is all one of the two has; the other has something special in addition and gets a new name; the one that adds nothing noteworthy keeps the common name.

• Five fingers, yet “four fingers and a thumb”: the thumb stands out (opposable; hitching a ride), so it gets the new name. In one sense a thumb is a finger, in another not — “very close to univocal.”
• Animal: man and beast are animals, yet “man is not an animal”; in logic “you’re an animal” is no insult, elsewhere it is. Beast keeps “animal,” man gets “man” because of reason. His mother objected to calling man an animal: “he’s not just an animal.” Mgr. Dionne hesitated to call this analogous at all; but Berquist found a text in Thomas where an objection says one does not distinguish genus against species (square vs. quadrilateral), and Thomas replies that sometimes you do, in terms of meaning — so there is some distinction in meaning, however little.
• Aristotle, Categories: habit is a disposition, yet habit is distinguished from disposition as a firm disposition not easily lost; the easily lost one keeps “disposition.” Mood changes through the day; being just or courageous is more permanent.
• Daily speech, not invented by philosophers: nursery “plants” vs. trees; “treat her as a person, not a thing” — yet a person is in some sense a thing, else nothing; person adds dignity (reason, will). The Iliad is a poem, yet poem (short) is distinguished from epic.
• “This is a common equivocation” — people are constantly puzzled by it.

8. Second subdivision: the one that has the meaning fully keeps the name (“only one of the two has fully, or completely, or perfectly the common meaning”) #

Point: quite different from the first case — the name is kept by the one that has the common meaning fully and perfectly, simply speaking; the one that has it imperfectly gets a new name.

• Understanding: Locke’s Essay on Human Understanding calls human reason “understanding.” Understanding = ability to understand, said of us, of a guardian angel, of God; angels and God understand all they naturally know at once, without discourse (his son Mark asked why we can’t be born knowing everything: “you want to be born an angel?”). They keep “understanding”; man, who barely understands and must think and think, gets “reason,” defined as ability for discourse, “looking before and after.” Latin: intellectus divided into intellectus (God, angels) and ratio (man). So Thomas sometimes says our reason is an understanding, sometimes divides reason against understanding.
• Familiar case: kitten is a cat, puppy is a dog; yet cat is divided into cat and kitten — cat keeps the name as fully developed. Boy is a man, girl a woman, yet “separate the men from the boys”; only the adult fully has what distinguishes man from woman.
• Aristotle: enthymeme sometimes called a syllogism (rhetorical syllogism), example a (rhetorical) induction; other times syllogism divided against enthymeme, induction against example; sometimes only two kinds of argument, syllogism and induction, so enthymeme and example must fall under them. Enthymeme is an imperfect, incomplete syllogism; example has something of induction imperfectly. Restaurant: a hundred reports of lousy meals → all meals lousy, an induction; one bad meal and “don’t go there” — one meal taken as representative, an imperfect induction, simply speaking not an induction but the argument called example.
• Aside: “example” is itself equivocal by reason — a singular illustrating a principle, or the argument from singular to singular; both use a singular to make something known.
• Most texts where Thomas treats analogous names do not treat these two, but he uses both ways of speaking elsewhere; they are very common in daily speech, philosophy, theology.
• Closing comparison (to be developed later with natures and numbers): “two” said of two and of two-plus-one — the first keeps “two,” the other gets “three,” since three has a two in it with something added. Likewise animal (living body with sensation) keeps its name; man, who has reason in addition, gets a new name.

His words #

• figurative naming: the meaning of the speaker is not the meaning of the word
• name of the name vs. name of the way of naming (metaphor/metaphorical naming; metonym/metonymy)
• antonomasia: giving the name of the general to the particular or vice versa (universal whole in its part)
• synecdoche: giving the name of a composed whole to its part or vice versa
• composed whole: put together from its parts; also “integral whole”
• universal whole: the general in the particular
• metonymy: one thing is “something of the other” (container/contained, cause/effect)
• metaphor: based on likeness; irony: based on the opposite
• univocal: one meaning; equivocal: more than one meaning
• equivocal by chance (purely equivocal) vs. equivocal by reason [ed.: analogous]; he avoids “analogous” since it names only naming by proportion
• kept as its own name / gets a new name as its own
• carried over from one thing to another (second way, not yet treated)
• habit: a firm disposition, not easily lost
• understanding: ability to understand; intellectus / ratio
• reason: ability for discourse, “looking before and after”
• enthymeme: rhetorical syllogism; example: rhetorical induction, argument from one singular to another of the same kind

Texts #

Read in class

• Handout, “Reasoning and the Four Kinds of Argument”, p. 2 (verified source; probably the enthymeme/example passage)
• The board text he dictates: “A name becomes equivocal by reason in two ways…” (his own)

Mentioned

• Thomas Aquinas on St Paul (Corinthians), irony not falsehood
• John, “the Word was made flesh”; “all flesh must come to thee”; “let the earth praise the Lord”
• Thomas Aquinas, commentary on the Psalms, “taste and see how sweet is the Lord”
• Aristotle, Categories, disposition and habit
• Plato, Apology
• Locke, Essay on Human Understanding
• Homer, Iliad; Shakespeare (“scornful pride,” “sweet form”); Boethius’ rule (promised)

His questions #

• What’s common to all figurative naming? The meaning of the word is not the meaning of the speaker.
• If the speaker’s meaning became a meaning of the word, what would happen? It would no longer be figurative speech (the “pig”/“glutton” dictionary case).
• In synecdoche and antonomasia, the relation of the two is that of what? Part and whole — composed whole vs. universal whole.
• “The Word was made flesh” — was it made flesh? Made man; the part named for the whole, a synecdoche.
• Christ means what, and we use it meaning what? Anointed; one man in particular — antonomasia.
• Is a place wicked? Is the age unhappy? No — the people in it; metonymy of container and contained.
• Is hyperbole a sixth figure different from these five? Left open — maybe like metaphor, maybe a different basis.
• Why does the thumb get the new name and the other four keep “finger”? Something special stands out in the thumb.
• Why not define reason as the ability to understand? Because man has that ability only imperfectly, through discourse; so he gets the new name “reason.”
• Is one bad meal enough for an induction? Something of an induction, but very imperfect — the argument called example.