Are affirmation and cataphasis the same figure?

In ordinary usage and most dictionaries, yes: cataphasis is the Greek name and affirmation (Latin affirmatio) is the English/Latin name for the same idea, a positive assertion. The standard specialist catalog disagrees. Silva Rhetoricae lists them as two separate figures with two different jobs. Affirmatio is general assertion-as-emphasis; cataphasis is the narrow paralipsis variant, the move behind sentences like "I will say nothing here of his fraudulent practices." Which answer is right depends on which catalog you're reading from.

Which answer should you use in practice?

The decision rule turns on the source you're working against.

If you're reading a general dictionary, a theology text, or a non-specialist treatment of rhetoric, treat affirmation and cataphasis as synonyms. Both name a positive assertion; apophasis (denial) is their shared opposite. That's the broad sense, and it is the one almost every reference work outside the rhetoric handbooks records.

If you're reading a rhetoric handbook or a stylistics text drawing on Silva Rhetoricae, treat them as separate figures. Affirmatio is general assertion-as-emphasis. Cataphasis is the paralipsis variant. The catalog keeps them apart, and a writer working from that catalog has to keep them apart too.

If you're writing for a mixed audience, flag the split rather than collapse it. A sentence like "in the broad sense, the same; in Silva's catalog, two different figures" loses nothing and protects you from the reader who came in from the other side.

Where you encounter the term	Treat affirmation and cataphasis as
Dictionaries, theology, general usage	Synonyms (both name a positive assertion)
Silva Rhetoricae and rhetoric handbooks drawing from it	Separate figures (affirmatio = general assertion as emphasis; cataphasis = paralipsis variant)

How does the Silva Rhetoricae catalog split them?

Silva Rhetoricae is the standard online specialist reference for rhetorical figures, and the split lives there. Two separate entries, two different definitions.

Affirmatio (affirmation) is treated as a general figure of thought: positively asserting that something is the case, often for emphasis when the point might otherwise be in dispute. The figure is direct. You assert the thing, plainly, and the emphasis comes from the act of asserting.

Cataphasis is treated as a kind of paralipsis, the figure of saying-by-claiming-not-to-say. Silva defines it as "a kind of paralipsis in which one explicitly affirms the negative qualities that one then passes over." The textbook example: "I will say nothing here of his fraudulent practices." The speaker pretends to omit the accusation while planting it firmly in the audience's mind.

The structural difference is the point. Affirmatio is direct positive assertion. Cataphasis is indirect negative assertion dressed as an omission. A speaker using affirmatio says "this is true." A speaker using cataphasis says "I won't mention X" while making sure the audience hears X. They are doing different rhetorical work, even if both technically affirm something.

This distinction is Silva's, and most general reference works ignore it. Outside the rhetoric handbooks, the narrower assignment of cataphasis to a paralipsis variant simply isn't recorded.

Where does the synonym claim come from?

The synonymy is real at the level of word meaning, which is why most readers arrive expecting the two terms to be interchangeable.

The Greek noun κατάφασις (kataphasis) literally means "an affirmation" or "positive assertion." Etymologically the words are direct equivalents: Greek κατά ("down, according to") plus φάσις ("a saying"). What affirmatio is to Latin, kataphasis is to Greek.

That broad equivalence is what dictionaries, Wiktionary, and theological sources record. Cataphatic theology, for example, simply means "affirmative discourse about God." When a Greek-Patristic source uses kataphasis, the working translation is affirmation, with no narrower technical assignment intended.

So the synonymy holds at the level of word meaning. What's narrower in Silva's catalog is the specialist's choice to assign the Greek term to one particular subfigure (the paralipsis variant) while keeping the Latin term for the general figure. Both are true. The etymological equivalence is true. The specialist split is also true. They belong in different sentences.

What's the broader Greek pair: cataphasis and apophasis?

In the broad Greek sense, cataphasis (positive statement) pairs with apophasis (negative statement, or saying-by-not-saying) as opposites. The pair is what powers cataphatic and apophatic theology: two complementary methods of approaching the divine, one by affirmation and one by negation.

The pairing matters here because the rhetorical figure and the theological method share a word and an etymology, but not a working meaning. The theologian using cataphasis means "affirmative predication about God." The rhetorician using cataphasis (in Silva's sense) means the paralipsis variant. The cousins look alike on the page and do completely different things in practice. The Greek spelling kataphasis and the Latinized cataphasis are interchangeable in both traditions; the difference is the field, not the orthography.

Cataphasis carries three distinct senses worth keeping straight: the broad-affirmation sense, the Silva paralipsis variant, and the theological method. Affirmation and cataphasis sit on the same side of the assertion/denial axis, which is why the synonymy claim is so durable in non-specialist writing. The cleaner contrast is affirmation against its negative twin apophasis, where the figure pairs with denial-by-not-naming and the difference is structural rather than terminological.

In the broad Greek and English sense, the two words name the same thing, and in everyday writing you can treat them as synonyms without losing accuracy. In the standard specialist catalog they are two separate figures with two different jobs, and a writer working from that catalog should keep them apart. The figure is the same; the technical assignment is not. Knowing which catalog you're reading from does the rest of the work.