Description
Book SynopsisLong considered one of late scholasticism's most important thinkers, Francisco Suarez has, paradoxically enough, often been treated only in relation to other medieval authors or as a transitional figure in the shift from medieval to Early Modern philosophy. As such, his thought has often been obscured and framed in terms of an alien paradigm. This book seeks to correct such approaches and examines Suarez's metaphysical thinking as it stands on its own. Suarez is shown to be much more in line with his medieval predecessors who developed their accounts of being to express the theological commitments they had made. Central to Suarez's account is a fundamental existential orientation, one that many interpreters have overlooked in favour of an understanding of being as reduced to essence or to the thinkable.
Table of ContentsPreface
Acknowledgments
Note on Textual Sources
Introduction
1. The Life and Work of Francisco Suárez
2. The Theological Context and Purpose of the Suárezian Metaphysics
3. Interpretive Trends
4. The Thesis and Structure of the Present Work
Chapter One: Metaphysics and Its Object
1. Being in Excess
2. Being in Restriction
2.1 Divine Science
2.2 Finite Being
3. Being as Transcendent
4. Conclusion
Chapter Two: Being and Existence
1. Formal and Objective Concepts
2. The Unity of the Concept of Being
3. Existence and Quiddity
4. Being as a Participle and as a Noun
5. Immanence
6. Conclusion
Chapter Three: The Transcendentality of Being
1. The Transcendental Explication of Being
1.1 Ratio Dubitandi: The Challenge to Transcendental Science
1.2 Suárez’s Transcendental Solution
2. Transcendentality and Mentalism?
2.1 The Accusation of Mentalism
2.2 The Intrinsic Entitative Character of the Transcendentals
2.2.1 Transcendental Unity
2.2.2 Transcendental Truth
2.2.3 Transcendental Goodness
3. Transcendentality and the Evisceration of Existence?
3.1 Transcendental Enumeration
3.2 Transcendental Reduction: Res
3.3 Transcendental Reduction: Aliquid
3.4 The Second Transcendental Perspective (Disjunctive Transcendentals)
4. Conclusion
Chapter Four: Being and Possibility
1. The Imitation Model
2. Duns Scotus: Esse intelligibile and Possibility
3. Suárez on the Divine Cognition of the Possibles
4. Suárez on the Entitative Status of the Possibles
4.1 The “Essentialism” of Essences?
4.2 Potential Being (i.e., Objective Potency)
4.3 Futuribilia
5. Suárez on the Modal Character of Possibility
6. Conclusion
Chapter Five: Being and Analogy
1. Equivocity
2. Univocity and the Unity of Being
3. Analogy
3.1 Proper Proportionality
3.2 Attribution
4. An Unequal, Inner Order
4.1 Inner Difference
4.2 Inner Unity
5. Conclusion
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index Nominum
Index Rerum
