Abstract

An understanding of the philosophical genus contributes to the perfection of the act of the philosophical habit of the human soul because reality is constituted by a multitude of overlapping genera. Because genera are constituted by a multitude of species unequally related to their generic aim, St. Thomas’s teaching on virtual quantity facilitates an understanding of the diversity of being. Analogy is an act of judgment that expresses an unequally proportionate relationship between beings. Like genus, analogy has to do with a multitude of beings unequally related to a primary subject; as such, analogy is the language of philosophy. To see ‘a city come into being in speech’ in Book II of The Republic is to be trained to observe the relation between real beings, to make correct judgments about those relationships, and to thereby be properly oriented toward reality.