Aristotle's Concept of Analogy and its Function in the Metaphysics

Abstract

This thesis aims to settle an old dispute concerning Aristotle’s concept of analogy and its function in the Metaphysics. The question is whether Aristotle’s theory of pros hen legomena, things predicated in reference to a single term, is implicitly a theory of analogy. In the Middle Ages, such unity of things said in reference to a single source, as the healthy is said in reference to health, was termed the analogy of attribution. Yet Aristotle never explicitly refers to pros hen unity as analogical unity. To arrive at an answer to this question, this thesis explores Aristotle’s concept of analogy with an eye to its actual function in the argument of the Metaphysics. As such, it offers an account of the place and role of analogy in Aristotelian first philosophy.