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closer to the particular, often murky, phenomena that make up much human life than does secondary theory."
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Though Yearley's focus on practical theory is finely tuned to the demands of his study of virtue, the notion of a form of understanding which is both concrete and productive of generalization, theoretical and practical, complements our previous comments on practical knowledge and highlights comparative theology as a reflective practice which develops new understandings while preserving the particularities of religious traditions' discourses about themselves. |
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Yearley's comments on analogy and imagination helpfully mark the balance the comparativist needs to maintain. Staying close to his materials, both respecting and honestly critiquing the ethical positions of Aquinas and Mencius, Yearley rejects univocity, whereby differences are overlooked in order to focus on similiarities, and equivocity, whereby differences are allowed to block any discussion of perceived though elusive similarities in the materials compared; neither univocity nor equivocity helps us to assess and articulate what is actually learned in a comparison.13 Yearley seeks a middle ground on which to treat more adequately materials which can be subjected to comparisoni.e., which are neither identical nor completely differentand concludes to an analogical mode of thought: "Through analyzing the ordered relationships among analogical terms we can preserve both clarity and textured diversity, and thereby fully articulate similarities in differences and differences in similarities."14 This process involves "ongoing operations" and ''continuing performances," and "does not rest on applying a static structure or a fixed theory to material;"15 rather, it is rooted in the ability and refined judgment of a skillful comparativist who knows how to make good comparisons and what to do with them: |
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. . . I think it clear that comparative studies of human flourishings must engage in a process that necessarily involves us in a form of imagining, in the utilization of the analogical imagination. To say we must use the imagination is not also to say that standards dissolve; it is not to join forces with some of the more radical forms of humanis- |
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