Existence and temporality according to Suarez. From ontology to politics: In Suarez’s metaphysics, there is an equivalence regarding to ens ab alio between duration and permanence in being. Interrogation about the relation between existence and temporality makes possible to reveal that political theory contributes to participate at the comprehension of the destiny of metaphysics; and the latter requires that its function be considered in the constitution of the signification and the purpose of human community.

Este estudio se propone destacar los resultados ofrecidos en la edición crítica y traducción portuguesa del libro De Legibus Uvm I Da Ley em Geral de F. Suárez, a cargo del mancomunado esfuerzo de investigadores lusos contemporáneos, quienes examinaron esa Obra de jurisprudencia nacida de las lecciones que F. Suárez diera desde 1601-3 y que plasmara en la edición original del tratado de Coimbra en 1612. Subrayo aspectos de la doctrina política que dejarán al descubierto un Suárez plura novavit, influyente (...) en la conformación moderna de la republica democrática. This paper calis the attention on the outcome of the research offered in the critical edition and Portuguese translation of the book De Legibus Livro I Da Ley em Geral de F. Suárez, done by the joint effort of contemporary Researchers, who examined that work of jurisprudence born of the lectures that Suarez gave around 1601-3, and that resulted in the original 1612 edition of the Coimbra treatise. I underline aspects of the political doctrine, which exposes a plura novavit-Suarez that promote a new form of the political regimes and influence in the shaping of the modern democratic republic. (shrink)

El presente artículo discute la posición de Suárez sobre la teoría del doble sentido de la existencia. La subordinación, en la primera sección, entre conceptos de primer y segundo orden, en contraste con la subsución entre un objeto que cae dentro de un concepto de primer orden y la distinción entre una “marca característica” y la “propiedad” de un concepto, ayudará a clarificar el doble sentido del ens ut nomen and ens ut participium en las Disputationes Metaphysicae de F. Suárez. (...) Este análisis nos proporciona una consideración más cercana, en la segunda sección del artículo, a la explicación del ente como ente real en Suárez, y subraya el patrón de la ciencia dentro de su contexto histórico. Tan pronto como buceamos un poco en la materia, aparece de modo claro, como consideramos de forma breve en las notas conclusivas, que esta investigación sobre la significación del ens ut nomen and ens ut participium en Suárez será particularmente útil para una discusión contemporánea de lo que denominamos “teoría de los dos sentidos de la de la existencia” y, quizás, puede tener interés histórico y teorético, relativo al orden lógico y ontológico derivado de estos dos sentidos de la existencia, considerando qué efecto puede tener, si seguimos más de cerca la aproximación suareziana. (shrink)

Studie se věnuje otázce po ontologickém statusu ideálního, potažmo fenomenálního prostoru v pojetí Gottfrieda Wilhelma Leibnize. Nejprve bude ujasněno, v jakém smyslu lze podle Leibnize za prostor v pravém slova smyslu považovat primárně pouze prostor ideální, sekundárně však rovněž prostor fenomenální. Posléze se vymezím zejména vůči takovým interpretacím leibnizovského ideálního prostoru, které v něm spatřují předzvěst prostoru kantovského. Leibnizův ideální, matematický prostor zde totiž bude přirovnán spíše k prostoru suárezovskému, případně hobbesovskému, nikoli však kantovskému.

This book collects six unpublished and published academic studies on the thought of Francisco Suárez, which is addressed through accurate textual analyses and meticulous contextualization of his doctrines in the Scholastic debate. The present essays aim to portray two complementary aspects coexisting in the work of the Uncommon Doctor: his innovative approach and his adherence to the tradition. To this scope, they focus on some pivotal, but often neglected, topics in Suárez’s metaphysics and psychology – such as his theories of (...) cognition and truth, angelology, continuous quantity – thereby developing an original inquiry into a crucial moment in the development of Western philosophy. (shrink)

Die Eine von der Grundeigenschaften Gottes ist die Ewigkeit. Die Ewigkeit kann man traditionell als zeitlos oder modern als zeitlich verstehen. Zu den wichtigsten Kritikpunkten an der zeitlosen Ewigkeit gehört der Einwand, dass der zeitlose Gott in der Welt nicht wirken kann. Die Gründe für solche Behauptungen kommen daher, dass der zeitlose Gott nicht wissen kann, was sich in der Welt früher oder später ereignet, er weiß nicht, welche Ereignisse aktuell, vergangen oder zukünftig sind. Gott hat nur ein tatsächliches Wissen, (...) er hat kein propositionelles Wissen wie wir Menschen. Dagegen kann man einwenden, dass Gott zwar nur tatsächliches Wissen hat, aber er kann wissen, was die Menschen wissen, durch die Einsicht in ihr Wissen in seiner Essenz. Das direkte Wissen Gottes ist nur tatsächlich, aber mittelbar kann er auch propositionelles Wissen der Menschen durch die Kenntnis ihres Erlebens von Zeitbewusstsein erfassen, das ein Teil der propositionellen Erkenntnis der Menschen ist. So kann er auch das Zeitbewusstsein der einzelnen Menschen erkennen, was er in seinem Bewusstsein einsieht. Damit erweist sich der Einwand gegen die Möglichkeit eines Wirkens Gottes in der Welt samt dem Einwand gegen einen zeitlosen Gott als hinfällig. (shrink)

The article investigates the distinction between the physical and the intentional causality that appeared in the 17thcentury scholasticism in the course of polemics with the traditional Aristotelian classification of causes and with the conception of causality developed by Francisco Suárez. The introduction of the distinction between physical and intentional causation was motivated by the insufficiency of the notion of causality, adopted in ancient and medieval natural philosophy to describe the causal processes in the sphere of conscious human activity. The authors (...) of the 17thcentury took as a base two concepts carefully elaborated by Suárez, that is, the concepts of influxus and of metaphorica motio, and, starting from them, introduced an additional concept of influxus intentionalis. (shrink)

According to certain interpretations of quantum mechanics, the behavior of some physical systems is random—that is, certain current states of physical systems are related to other current states and the set of possible future states in a probabilistic, rather than a deterministic, fashion. This account of physical systems seems to conflict with the claim that there is an omnipotent God—that is, a God Who can efficaciously bring about any logically possible creaturely state, and Who can cause efficacious secondary causes—and so (...) raises problems for classical theism. After explaining these problems, I provide a solution to them based upon a version of hylomorphism, which I call Theistic Hylomorphism with Randomness. On this view, it can be affirmed that the physical world is both random and in determinate states, and divine omnipotence can be upheld in a random world. After presenting this version of hylomorphism and showing how it defeats the problems for classical theism raised by quantum mechanics, I defend it against three objections. (shrink)

This essay explores Francisco Suárez’s account of the nature of human free will. To that end, Suárez’s engagement with John Calvin is considered so as to place the Jesuit’s account into greater relief. The conclusion of this study will reveal that, for Suárez, the human will’s freedom of self–determination is both caused by God and consists in its own indifference regarding the power to act and the power not to act.

Philosophers today have largely given up on the project of categorizing being. Aristotle’s ten categories now strike us as quaint, and no attempt to improve on that effort meets with much interest. Still, no one supposes that reality is smoothly distributed over space. The world at large comes in chunks, and there remains a widespread intuition, even among philosophers, that some of these chunks have a special sort of unity and persistence. These, we tend to suppose, are most truly agents (...) and subjects, and are what exist in the most proper sense of the term. We believe, in other words, in substances. (shrink)

In this essay, I investigate Baumgarten’s doctrine of the six perfections of knowledge (wealth, magnitude, truth, clarity, certainty, and life), which is famously one of the most characteristic and enigmatic features of his philosophy. Recent scholarship has almost unanimously stressed the rhetorical background of the categories. Instead, I argue that Baumgarten elaborates his theory in close relationship with coeval philosophy. To support this claim, I examine the position of some Thomasian philosophers, such as Johann Liborius Zimmermann, who had indicated a (...) list of criteria similar to that of Baumgarten. Moreover, I analyse the distinction between formal and material perfections, tracing it back to the Wolffian milieu. On these bases, I propose a new reconstruction of Baumgarten’s doctrine, with particular attention to its aesthetic application. Finally, I outline the reception of the six categories in the late German Enlightenment until Kant. (shrink)

This essay offers an account of the relationship between extended Leibnizian bodies and unextended Leibnizian monads, an account that shows why Leibniz was right to see intimate, explanatory connections between his studies in physics and his mature metaphysics. The first section sets the stage by introducing a case study from Leibniz's technical work on the strength of extended, rigid beams. The second section draws on that case study to introduce a model for understanding Leibniz's views on the relationship between derivative (...) and primitive forces. The third section draws on Leibniz's understanding of the relationship between derivative and primitive forces in order to shed light, in turn, on his understanding of the relationship between extended, material bodies and unextended, immaterial monads. The fourth section responds to a likely objection by arguing that Leibniz's monads may, in a perfectly reasonable sense, be spatially located. (shrink)

In two rarely discussed passages – from unpublished notes on the Principles of Philosophy and a 1647 letter to Chanut – Descartes argues that the question of the infinite extension of space is importantly different from the infinity of time. In both passages, he is anxious to block the application of his well-known argument for the indefinite extension of space to time, in order to avoid the theologically problematic implication that the world has no beginning. Descartes concedes that we always (...) imagine an earlier time in which God might have created the world if he had wanted, but insists that this imaginary earlier existence of the world is not connected to its actual duration in the way that the indefinite extension of space is connected to the actual extension of the world. This paper considers whether Descartes’s metaphysics can sustain this asymmetrical attitude towards infinite space vs. time. I first consider Descartes’s relation to the ‘imaginary’ space/time tradition that extended from the late scholastics through Gassendi and More. I next examine carefully Descartes’s main argument for the indefinite extension of space and explain why it does not apply to time. Most crucially, since duration is merely conceptually distinct from enduring substance, the end or beginning of the world entails the end or beginning of real time. In contrast, extension does not depend on any enduring substance besides itself. (shrink)

In this article I dispute the claim, made by several contemporary scholars, that Spinoza was a naturalist. ‘Naturalism’ here refers to two distinct but related positions in contemporary philosophy. The first, ontological naturalism, is the view that everything that exists possesses a certain character permitting it to be defined as natural and prohibiting it from being defined as supernatural. I argue that the only definition of ontological naturalism that could be legitimately applied to Spinoza's philosophy is so unrestrictive as to (...) tell us nothing about the content of his ideas. The second, methodological naturalism, is the view that the natural sciences are the best means of finding out substantial truths about the concrete world. I present some historical research showing that Spinoza's way of positioning himself with respect to other philosophers in the Dutch Republic casts very serious doubt on the claim that he was a methodological naturalist. This adds further weight to arguments that have already been made against the naturalist reading of Spinoza. (shrink)

El presente trabajo tiene como objeto un estudio de los conceptos de magnitud extensiva e intensiva en la Analítica de los Principios de la primera crítica kantiana, tomando como hilo conductor la discusión en torno al concepto de cantidad continua de las Disputaciones Metafísicas de Suárez. Dicho análisis se articula a partir de la lectura de las dos proposiciones cosmológicas enunciadas por Kant en sus lecciones de metafísica según los apuntes del conde Dohna-Wundlacken: «in mundo non datur abyssus» e «in (...) mundo non datur saltus». En este contexto, se tratará de explicar la estrategia seguida por Kant para explicar el modo en que el carácter discreto del tiempo entendido como serie y su carácter continuo pueden conciliarse. (shrink)

The article will expose the problem of the nature of reality stablished in the first sections of Wittgenstein"s “Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus”, especially the aphorisms 1 to 2.063 seeking to show points of contact between the Aristotelian-Thomistic and Suarezian thought. Initially, (I) a distinction is made between metaphysics and ontology in order to understand why Wittgenstein, notorious for his anti-metaphysical thought, actually ends up producing a theory of reality. Subsequently, (II) the relationship between reality and language will be drawn from the characteristic (...) isomorphism of the Tractatus in which a structural similarity will appear with the Aristotelian-Thomistic thought. This relationship will be the basis for (III) the construction of an ontological image of reality as the condition of possibility for a meaningful language. With this outlook, the (IV) hypothesis of the influence of Francisco Suárez"s thought as the content behind this Wittgensteinian description of reality will be advanced. (shrink)

In this paper I present Suárez’s conception on material substance in connection with two main aspects of his theory. The first aspect is “reification” of the intrinsic principles of a composite, which has led some interpreters to the claim that Suárez significantly prepared the way for the accession of Cartesian anthropological dualism. The second one is Suárez’s emphasis on the substantial unity of material composites. The analysis of the second aspect is conceived as a counterbalance to some uncharitable interpretations of (...) Suárez’s hylemorphism. In the second part of the paper the relevance of Suárez’s arguments to contemporary debates on the ontological constitution of individuals is presented. (shrink)

This article defends a teleological approach which is compatible with our scientific image. It is held that organisms can be depicted as autonomous systems in which occurs autorregulation processes and exhibits a teleological behaviour oriented to an equilibrium. Furthermore, the aforementioned systems are well depicted as mechanical ones. In sum, finality can be understood as a search of an equilibrium by the natural systems in their adaptation to environment. So, we conciliate finalism and mechanicism.

Resumen: En este artículo reviso la interpretación de Eduardo Nicol de la teoría de la propiedad de Francisco Suárez. Para ello, presento la posición de Suárez acerca de la propiedad y la propiedad privada atendiendo dos cuestiones fundamentales. La primera es si la propiedad y la propiedad privada son derechos; la segunda es si ambos pertenecen a la naturaleza humana o no. Al final, argumento que la lectura de Nicol es insostenible, pues difícilmente puede admitirse que Suárez defendió algún tipo (...) de comunismo.: In this paper I revisit Eduardo Nicol’s interpretation of Suarez’s theory of property. To this purpose, I present Suárez’s account of property and private property focusing on two main aspects. The first is whether property and private property are rights; the second is whether they belong to the human nature or not. Finally, I argue that Nicol’s reading of Suárez is untenable for it can hardly be accepted that Suárez defended some kind of communism. (shrink)