People Who "Need" Analogies

All things have relationships of similarity or dissimilarity with all other things.  Reason is what it is, intrinsically true and immutable, and thus it is different from the laws of nature that only exist if there is a world of matter.  Even then, the laws of physics could have been wildly different.  The laws of logic could not have been any other way because they are true in themselves and transcend all else.  This is a dissimilarity between logic and scientific laws even though both would be a part of reality and are governed by reason, which are similarities between them.

There are many people who will or would likely never pinpoint a great many demonstrable truths without prompting or without such analogies and distinctions.  With analogies, a partial or largely shared characteristic between two things is used to either express admiration for a truth or as a way to become more familiar with one thing or the other.  The similarities and differences between various separate concepts or issues, for them, are things they feel dependent on to lead them onward, and they might think analogies are necessary for knowledge or are far more important than they are.

Appreciating or in certain cases looking to analogies for clarification is not irrational, given that the person is not making any assumptions and is aligned with/submitted to reason the entire time.  People who think they need analogies instead of pure necessary truths or direct concepts are unintelligent and in the wrong, though.  They have made themselves "dependent" upon secondary things when they could always look straight to reason and then discover or savor analogies from the foundation of actual prior knowledge instead trying to hopelessly go about things the other way.  Such people are not competent philosophers and they are certainly not even trying hard enough.

Any truth about analogies is after all only knowable in light of reason and not because of the inverse.  Logical axioms are self-evident because they are true by necessity.  From them, other necessary truths follow, though these additional strictly logical truths are not evident in themselves, only in light of axioms.  Anyone can realize or cling to these because even on the level of epistemology, there is no true barrier to discovering that which is inherently true and thus self-evident.  Analogies can only be true because reason dictates it, so purposefully going to analogies instead of direct logical truths about the nature of a thing is a backwards, invalid approach to reality.

Irrational people of course might be deeply hurt or offended by these truths.  It is not as if they even know or are devoted to logical axioms, or else they would not be irrationalists, but rationalists.  The wonderful and liberating truth is that their psychological status is irrelevant.  Reality is not about them; it is about reason, God, whatever moral obligations exist, the external world, and the nature of every other truth or being that is contingent upon separate things.  Analogies can be true.  Analogies can be useful for personal reflection or for conversation.  Reality is still far more metaphysically foundational and epistemologically accessible than analogies all the same.