From Metaphors to CategoriesThe Contemplative and Semantic Cycle of the Divine Names

Resumen

The legend of Ramon Lull’s revelation (Dominus illustrauit mentem suam, Vita, 16) tells us that he received from God the principles of divine and natural knowledge (generalia principia ad magis specifica, Vita, 16). That account may simply be the happy recollection of one medieval master, but the story serves to illustrate the different senses of the principia divina or dignitates dei. The result is a defense of the univocal sense of divine names, and also of the divine names as metaphors that work as intellectual rules of their equivocal meanings. The different uses of the terms which are designated in Llull’s thought as “divine attributes” are derived from the metaphorical and logical contents. God transcends categories. The identification of the divine being with the unity of his attributes and his creative production is a heritage of the medieval tradition, which Llull assimilated in a logical and semantic way, in applying the ambiguity of metaphors in the context of fallacies to achieve the contemplative life.