Background
Francisco Suárez was born on January 5, 1548, in Granada, Andalusia (southern Spain).
(The importance of Francis Suarez is more and more being r...)
The importance of Francis Suarez is more and more being recognized. Suarez was so successful in writing a systematic presentation of metaphysics - that was not a commentary on Aristotle - that his work was used as a university textbook and as a model for aspiring metaphysicians for over a hundred years, not only by his fellow Jesuits, but also, perhaps to an even greater extent, by Protestant scholastic philosophers and theologians. Suarez's in?uence was not restricted to the scholastic tradition; rather, it extended, both through that tradition and independently of it, into the main currents of modern thought. It can be detected in Descartes, Leibniz, Wolf and, ultimately, in Kant himself. So pervasive was Suarez's influence on modern thought, that Alasdair Maclntyre has called Suarez the first truly modern philosopher. Even apart from its historical influence, Suarez's work remains important for its intrinsic merit. It could be very reasonably argued that Suarez produced the most perfect incarnation of the type of realistic metaphysics initiated by Aristotle. As long, therefore, as Aristotelianism remains a live option for philosophers, Suarez's work will remain valuable to those engaged in the philosophical enterprise. Disputation XV, which deals with the formal principle of the nature of material substances, that is, their substantial form, is central to Suarez's presentation of Aristotelian realism. In the Disputation Suarez defended the view, contrary to both dualism and materialism, that material objects are constituted by two co-principles, primary matter and substantial form. The two translators, Jeremiah Reedy and John Kronen, have produced a clear and readable translation of this Disputation central to Suarezian metaphysics. In his introduction and notes to the translation Kronen clearly explains the metaphysics of substantial form and clari?es many of the problems which Suarez discusses.
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(Relation is at the heart of any philosophy but especially...)
Relation is at the heart of any philosophy but especially of Aristotelian philosophy. It is also at the heart of theological understanding of the central Christian doctrine of the Trinity of Persons in God. Arguably the greatest, and certainly the most influential, Jesuit philosopher-theologian of all time, Francisco Suarez (1548-1617), would by any estimate qualify to explain relation. While he has treated the subject often in his published writings, his best and most systematic treatment of its myriad dimensions will be found in his famous Disputationes metaphysicae in two places. Earlier translated into English by the translator of the present volume, Disputation 54, Section 6, gives Suarez's teaching on mind-dependent relations. This translation now of the eighteen Sections of Disputation 47 contains his careful, broad, and deep thought on mind-independent, both categorical and transcendental, relations. While Suarez presents his teaching in a systematic way, he intentionally wraps it around a first-rate explanation of Aristotle's enigmatic treatment of the category of Aristotle's enigmatic treatment of the category of relation in the Perihermeneias and the Metaphysics. For that explanation alone, the present volume is timelessly valuable. But as any serious reader will soon see, its value only begins there.
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( Francisco Suárez was a principal figure in the transiti...)
Francisco Suárez was a principal figure in the transition from scholastic to modern natural law, summing up a long and rich tradition and providing much material both for adoption and controversy in the seventeenth century and beyond. Most of the selections translated in this volume are from On the Laws and God the Law-Giver (De legibus ac Deo legislatore, 1612), a work that is considered one of Suárezs greatest achievements. Working within the framework originally elaborated by Thomas Aquinas, Suárez treated humanity as the subject of four different laws, which together guide human beings toward the ends of which they are capable. Suárez achieved a double objective in his systematic account of moral activity. First, he examined and synthesized the entire scholastic heritage of thinking on this topic, identifying the key issues of debate and the key authors who had formulated the different positions most incisively. Second, he went beyond this heritage of authorities to present a new account of human moral action and its relationship to the law. Treading a fine line between those to whom moral directives are purely a matter of reason and those to whom they are purely a matter of a commanding will, Suárez attempted to show how both human reason and the command of the lawgiver dictate the moral space of human action. The Liberty Fund edition is a revised version of that prepared for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace by translators Gwladys L. Williams, Ammi Brown, and John Waldron, with revisions by Henry Davis, S. J. Francisco Suárez (1548?1617), a Jesuit priest, was professor of theology at the University of Salamanca in Spain. Annabel S. Brett is a Fellow, Tutor, and University Lecturer in History at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. Knud Haakonssen is Professor of Intellectual History at the University of Sussex, England.
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(The Spanish Jesuit Francisco Suarez (1548-1617) was an em...)
The Spanish Jesuit Francisco Suarez (1548-1617) was an eminent Catholic philosopher-theologian whose Disputationes Metaphysicae were first published in Spain in 1597 and came to be widely studied throughout Europe during the seventeenth century. The Disputationes Metaphysicae not only constituted the high point of sixteenth-century scholastic metaphysics but exercised a great influence on early modern philosophers such as Descartes, Malebranche, and Leibniz. This is the first time that Disputations 20-22 have been translated into English. These disputations, which deal with the divine actions of creation, conservation, and concurrence, form the last half of Suarez's treatment of efficient causality. The present work completes thus Freddoso's translation of Suarez's full account of efficient causality in the Disputationes Metaphysicae. In his lengthy introduction, Freddoso situates the Disputationes Metaphysicae within their proper intellectual context, provides a basic introduction to scholastic ontology and treatments of efficient causality, and traces the main lines of argument proposed by Suarez in Disputations 20-22.
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Francisco Suárez was born on January 5, 1548, in Granada, Andalusia (southern Spain).
Suárez studied canon law at the University of Salamanca.
In 1564, he entered the Society of Jesus. From 1571 he taught philosophy, in 1580 becoming a theology instructor at the Jesuit college in Rome and later at Alcalá. In 1593 King Philip II of Spain appointed him to teach, and he eventually served as a professor at Coimbra (1597–1616). Holder of a doctorate from Évora (1597), Suárez was an exceptionally erudite and methodical scholar whose works, even in the incomplete Paris edition (1856–1878), fill 28 volumes.
His principal study in philosophy is the Disputationes Metaphysicae (1597), which was used for more than a century as a textbook at most European universities, Catholic and Protestant alike. In this work, which treats especially the problems of human will and the concept of general versus particular phenomena, Suárez drew upon Aristotle and Aquinas, although he took into consideration the criticisms of other Scholastic philosophers such as Duns Scotus (c. 1265–1308) of Britain and Luis de Molina (1535–1600) of Spain. His departures from Aquinas’ positions have been considered significant enough to warrant the separate designation of his system as Suárezianism.
At the request of Pope Paul V and others, he wrote apologetic works on the nature of the Christian state. Among them were De Virtute et Statu Religionis (1608–1609) and Defensio Fidei Catholicae (1613), opposing Anglican theologians who defended the claim of kings to rule as God’s earthly representatives. This theory, the divine right of kings, was advanced in England at the time by James I, who subsequently burned Suárez’ Defensio on the steps of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. On the question of man’s ability to effect his own salvation by his works, Suárez, in his De Vera Intelligentia Auxilii Efficacis (1605, pub. 1655), supported the view of the Congruist movement, which held that God gave man sufficient grace to achieve the virtuous conduct congruent to, or in harmony with, his own will.
Suárez expounded his political theory and philosophy of law in De Legibus (1612; “On Laws”) as well as in the Defensio. Having refuted the divine-right theory of kingly rule, he declared that the people themselves are the original holders of political authority; the state is the result of a social contract to which the people consent. Arguing for the natural rights of the human individual to life, liberty, and property, he rejected the Aristotelian notion of slavery as the natural condition of certain men. He criticized most of the practices of Spanish colonization in the Indies in his De Bello et de Indis (“On War and the Indies”). The islands of the Indies he viewed as sovereign states legally equal to Spain as members of a worldwide community of nations.
Francisco Suárez died on September 25, 1617, at Lisbon, after a few days illness.
(The Spanish Jesuit Francisco Suarez (1548-1617) was an em...)
( Francisco Suárez was a principal figure in the transiti...)
(Relation is at the heart of any philosophy but especially...)
(The importance of Francis Suarez is more and more being r...)