%0 Journal Article
%T Having Our Cake and Eating It, Metaphysically Speaking: Analogy as the Key to the Unity of Metaphysics as a Science of Being qua Being: A Response to Oliva Blanchette
%A Gavin T. Colvert
%J The Saint Anselm Journal
%D 2005
%I Institute for Saint Anselm Studies
%X This paper responds to Oliva Blanchette's essay, "Analogy and the Transcendental Properties of Being as the Key to Metaphysical Science." The author raises some critical questions, while agreeing with Blanchette's thesis that the doctrine of analogy is central to the resolution of problems in contemporary metaphysics. The response takes it starting point from Blanchette's assertion that 'analytical philosophy' fails to engage in genuinely metaphysical inquiry because it attempts to reduce all predications to univocal terms. The paper argues that 'analytical philosophy' is itself an analogous term and that some analysts have rejected this attempted reduction. Wittgenstein's later work is offered as an example. These observations about analytical philosophy are relevant to the central concerns of Blanchette's paper because the internal debate among analytical philosophers mirrors a perennial tension between the attempt to preserve the unitary character of metaphysics and the desire to have a science of the real. Analysts who reject analogous predication often do so because they think that non-univocal discourse will violate the truth-conditions for scientific inferences, because it will require repudiation of the principle of non-contradiction. This position has tended to predominate in analytical philosophy. Wittgenstein attempts to preserve the unity of philosophical reflection by recognizing the analogous nature of language. The price for Wittgenstein, however, is that we must reject philosophy's pretensions to be a science of the real. The response argues that this tension clarifies some of the challenges faced by Blanchette's proposal to recover the unity of metaphysics as a science of being qua being in the doctrine of analogy.
%U http://www.anselm.edu/Documents/Institute%20for%20Saint%20Anselm%20Studies/Abstracts/4.5.3.2h_22Colvert.pdf