In this article, I set out Suárez's conception of the demon's obstinacy. For Suárez, the demons’ obstinacy is a divine punishment. It is the result of the free and awful choice to turn away from God that the demons have decided to make, the main consequence of which is the loss of the freedom to will and to do the good. Taking up Aquinas’s conception, Suárez considers that the demonic nature is irredeemably corrupt and obstinate in evil. Demons (...) are provided only with a miserable freedom, consisting of the possibility to choose between different evils. Perpetually sinful and eternally constrained to remain so, they are condemned to wretchedness, to complacency in evil, and to the unremitting torments of hell. (shrink)

In seiner Vorlesung "Uber das Willentliche und das Unwillentliche" unternimmt Suarez, der als Autor der Fruhen Neuzeit in seinem Werk wie nur wenige andere Autoren seiner Zeit die mittelalterliche Philosophie und Theologie systematisch aufnimmt und neu verarbeitet, den Versuch, die Willenstheorien der Patristik, der Hochscholastik und der fruhneuzeitlichen Aristotelesrezeption miteinander zu verknupfen. Das Werk entstammt einer Vorlesungsreihe, die Suarez zwischen 1578 und 1585 am Collegium Romanum auf Einladung von Papst Gregor XIII. abhielt. In der Diskussion der Willensfreiheit, der Rolle von (...) Zwang oder Gewalt und den verschiedenen Arten des Willentlichen legt Suarez den Grundstein fur seine spatere Moralphilosophie. (shrink)

The Spanish Jesuit Francisco Suarez was an eminent philosopher and theologian whose _Disputationes Metaphysicae_ was first published in Spain in 1597 and was widely studied throughout Europe during the seventeenth century. The _Disputationes Metaphysicae_ had a great influence on the development of early modern philosophy and on such well-known figures as Descartes and Leibniz. This is the first time that Disputations 17, 18, and 19 have been translated into English. The _Metaphysical Disputations_ provide an excellent philosophical introduction to the (...) medieval Aristotelian discussion of efficient causality. The work constitutes a synthesis of monumental proportions: problematic issues are lucidly delineated and the various arguments are laid out in depth. Disputations 17, 18, and 19 deal explicitly with such issues as the nature of causality, the types of efficient causes, the prerequisites for causal action, causal contingency, human free choice, and chance. (shrink)

This article proposes a guideline to develop an ontology of software. The first section gives a brief introduction to the importance of such ontology as a possible conceptual grounding for the philosophy of software, philosophy of computing and philosophy of information. The second section presents the background of the scope of this article in terms of both a symbolic and materialistic approach to software. The third section deploys the basic guidelines with the expositions of the two dimensions of software: the (...) serial dimension and the structural dimension. The first dimension consists of three series, while the second in the exposition of the structure of any program. The fourth and last section will deal with a better understanding of what we can call the digital universe. (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.

It has recently been argued that God’s causation of human free choices is best understood in light of Aquinas’s teaching on creation. Such a position is attractive because it provides a way of avoiding the compatibilism of classical interpretations of Aquinas. However, this position may be subject to other flaws. In fact, Francisco Suárez explicitly rejects the view that God’s creative causality can be understood either as the divine essence or as a predicamental relation of the created effect (...) to God. The purpose of this essay is to investigate, first, whether Suárez’s view of efficient causality rules out conceptualizing God’s motion of the will in terms of creation, and second, whether it provides a more plausible alternative. I argue on both points that it does not, and that an error common to both Suárez and his sixteenth-century opponents is one reason to conceptualize divine motion as a kind of creation. (shrink)

Suárez undertakes systematic study of natural moral law in Book II of De legibus, which is integrally consecrated to the study of the eternal law, natural right and the right of nations. In confrontation, among others, with the thesis of Gabriel Vázquez, Suárez maintains the natural moral law is a divine obligatory law or command, which orders to do or to avoid that which is «fitting» or «unfitting» with the human rational nature. Divine Mind and Will contribute thus, each (...) within the bounds of his own sphere, towards the promulgation of the natural moral law. (shrink)

Departing from a reduction of the person’s concept to one of his more typical notes, which is, the freedom, we propose a review of the theory of the free arbitrament exposed by Francisco Suárez, attending with exclusivity to his writings episthemics and metaphysicians more significant. The extension of the question urges us to reduce the company to his formal aspects. Departing from the comparison of the cognitive top powers of the person, we descend up to the conditions necessary (...) for the disposition of the free action. They come to be interwoven in the study of the freedom, the problem of the determinism, so much of the understanding on the will, since of the divine affirm the personal freedom on determining those. (shrink)

Edith Stein (1891-1942) is a clear example of a philosopher, since she dedicated her entire life and effort to the conquest of Truth, of Being. The path she follows begins with her personal experience and her desire to find an answer to the existence of man. In phenomenology, she will find a means of confronting reality, free of prejudices. During her intellectual and existential journey, she meets a God that becomes living experience and quenches her thirst for Truth. (...) She completes her contemplation of the philosophical being by means of a mystic contemplation of Being. Her philosophical activity is a road that leads "from finite being to eternal being". (shrink)

Edith Stein (1891-1942) is a clear example of a philosopher, since she dedicated her entire life and effort to the conquest of Truth, of Being. The path she follows begins with her personal experience and her desire to find an answer to the existence of man. In phenomenology, she will find a means of confronting reality, free of prejudices. During her intellectual and existential journey, she meets a God that becomes living experience and quenches her thirst for Truth. (...) She completes her contemplation of the philosophical being by means of a mystic contemplation of Being. Her philosophical activity is a road that leads “from finite being to eternal being”. (shrink)

The paper explores different possibilities in order of maintaining a compatibilism between free will, in a strong sense, and determinism. The notion of determinism is analyzed in deep. It is defended a general conception of free will as a certain kind of mental causation in absence of fatalism. Also, it is argued that other compatibilist possibilities would be possible inside that general conception of free will, being some of them more radical than other ones.

In this article, we propose a philosophical exploration on the main problems involved in two neurorights that concern autonomous action, namely free will and cognitive liberty, and sketch a possible solution to these problems by resourcing to a holistic interpretation of human actions. First, we expose the main conceptual and practical issues arising from the neuroright to “free will,” which are far from minor: the term itself is denied by some trends participating in the neurorights debate, (...) the related concept of ultimate control is also disputed, the understanding of free will depends on cultural context, and the exercise of being free to act in several domains may be covered by other regulations. Second, we analyze the historical origin of cognitive liberty, its current status, and its relation with free will. Third, we criticize the concept of decision in mainstream action theory and propose to conceive action as a unified process constituted by three explanatory, non-sequential dimensions: intention, decision, and action realization. Fourth, we discuss two possible cases involving neurotechnologies and suggest ways to interpret them according to a unified framework in which free will and cognitive liberty fall under a single neuroright to personal autonomy. Finally, we outline a recommendation to introduce freedom of thought and personal autonomy as complementary neurorights to protect both the internal and external dimensions of thought and action. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Hegel’s Theory of Self-Conscious Life by Guido SeddoneWill DesmondSEDDONE, Guido. Hegel’s Theory of Self-Conscious Life. Leiden: Brill, 2023. 155 pp. Cloth, $138.00Guido Seddone’s monograph explores an ensemble of issues centering on what he terms Hegelian “naturalism.” He argues that “Hegel’s philosophy represents a novel version of naturalism since it stresses the mutual dependence between nature and spirit, rather than just conceiving of spirit as a substance emerging and (...) separating from bodily natural requisites.” Seddone avoids scholarly exegeses to address instead “theoretical and systematic aspects of the Hegelian philosophy.” He focusses on “life” and “self-consciousness” as the conceptual keys to those parts of Hegel that remain compelling for relevant contemporary debates. “This book is, therefore, based on the dialogue between Hegel [End Page 361] and contemporary thinkers and strives to enhance our understanding of theoretical and practical issues and to widen the grammar of the philosophical thought.” The book’s chapters proceed from the more abstract to the more concrete—essentially from issues of logic, epistemology, and psychology to morality, society, and history.Chapter 1 (“Science of Logic: The Logical Premises of Hegel’s Naturalism”) argues that the categories of “Teleology” and “Life” in Hegel’s Science of Logic mark the critical transition in his naturalism from the sciences of physics (“Mechanism”) and chemistry (“Chemism”) to biology, as well as from external nature to inner self-consciousness and cognition. Seddone helpfully points to Hegel’s revisions of Kant’s subordination of teleological language (merely heuristic) to mechanical explanation. Most promising is the comparison of the “self-referring negativity” of Hegelian “life” to discussions by Evan Thompson and Francisco Varela of the cell—whose permeable membrane enables it to be more than its merely chemical environment.Chapter 2 (“Self-Consciousness”) takes a rather bird’s-eye approach to the Phenomenology of Spirit, offering a basic reading of Hegelian self-consciousness and Geist in relation to the Cartesian cogito and Kantian unity of apperception. Scattered remarks about animal desire and the master–slave relation could be clarified to better explore a naturalistic basis of the Hegelian conception of mind. One is struck by the dearth of specific texts from the section “Self-Consciousness”: Seddone seems content with some well-known quotations (for example, Geist as an “I that is We and We that is I”) punctuating large generalizations.Chapter 3 does not quite live up to its title (“The Hegelian Theory about the (Human) Biological Organism”) in that it focuses primarily on Hegel’s “treatise about habits” in the Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences. Here habit is construed as a second nature, and hence a further step toward self-conscious, relational mind: Habits are “universal ways of the soul, i.e. ways in which individual soul [sic] incorporates feelings by evolving general rules and practices.”The last section of chapter 4 (“Extended and Embodied Mind”) reverts to habits as moments of the feeling soul but dissociates Hegel’s notion of Verleiblichung from contemporary discussions of embodied mind. By contrast, Seddone argues for retranslating Hegelian Geist as “common mind” and juxtaposes this with the related concept of mind (in, for example, Philip Pettit) as “extended” through social entities, with the result that Hegel’s approach is praised as “the state-of-the-art of this topic.”Chapter 5 (“Natural and Self-conscious Agency”) is perhaps the clearest chapter as it presents the dialectic of the abstractly universal will in the initial sections of Philosophy of Right, links this and the Hegelian conception of free agency to his logical category of “actuality,” and proceeds to an illuminating contrast of the Hobbesian and Hegelian visions of society and state. [End Page 362]In tackling attempts to reconcile “Normativity and Freedom,” chapter 6 spends over six pages rehearsing the basics of Kantian autonomy before turning to Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit, specifically the master–slave dialectic (again) as the critical moment in the evolution of social norms. “My thesis is that self-conscious life needs recognition in order to achieve the higher form of independence created by social acknowledgement and justification, what [sic] fosters the condition for an authoritative reason that can be socially... (shrink)

En los últimos 15 años se han dado una multitud de esfuerzos para elaborar normas internacionales sobre los derechos de las minorías, tanto en el nivel mundial como en el nivel regional. Mundialmente, la ONU adoptó una Declaración sobre los Derechos de las Personas Pertenecientes a Minorías Nacionales o Étnicas, Religiosas y Lingüísticas en 1992, y está debatiendo un Proyecto de la Declaración sobre los Derechos de los Pueblos Indígenas. Otras organizaciones internacionales como la Organización Mundial del Trabajo y el (...) Banco Mundial, también han elaborado normas sobre los derechos de las minorías. Algunas organizaciones, como la Organización de Estados Americanos y el Consejo de Europa, también han redactado declaraciones de nivel regional. (shrink)

The theme of ecology is much more than a trend or a politically correct subject. What is at stake is the maintenance of life upon the Earth, including the very human survival which depends on the environment. This article is an effort towards relating ethics with the environmental and ecological issues. It starts with the matter of free will which brings the fundamental need of ethics. Then there are a few considerations on ethics and the challenge to expand (...) this concept beyond the human scope. Some environmental issues are presented, among which the preservation of forests, the dignity of animals and meat consumption, with considerations based on ethical principles. Last but not least, there is the aid of Christian teachings, relating the Parable of the Good Samaritan with the teachings of Saint Francis of Assisi, in the hope of contributing to a clearer view on the subject and perhaps touching a few hearts. (shrink)

In this paper I will explore certain key features of Francisco Suarez's account of God's action in the world, with an eye toward explaining his view of the precise way in which God concurs with--that is, makes an immediate causal contribution to--free action in general and sinful action in particular. Suarez agrees with his mainly Thomistic opponents that God is an immediate cause of every effect produced by creatures--including every free act and, a fortiori , every (...) sinful act elicited by creatures with a rational or 'free' nature. But he differs markedly from them in his account of how it can be plausibly maintained that God permits sin without causing sin or, to put it somewhat differently, how it can be plausibly maintained that the moral defectiveness of a sin is not traceable to God as a source. (shrink)

This article reassesses Suárez’s claim that real essences are intrinsically logically possible. (Henceforth, this claim is referred to as ‘ILP.’) Most scholars have understood ILP as asserting the independence of logical possibility from God’s power; on their view, it in fact asserts that real essences in themselves explain logical possibility. As a result, the claim is in tension with Suárez’s other thesis that real essences are nothing in themselves. Scholars have taken two main approaches to assessing this tension. Some, like (...) John Doyle and Norman Wells, argue that Suárez contradicts himself. There is no way for real essences both to be intrinsically logically possible and also to be nothing. More recently, however, scholars have jumped to Suárez’s defense. They argue that he avoids contradiction because they claim that he accepts some further radical thesis which allows him to remove the tension. But these scholars still accept the claim that ILP asserts that real essences explain logical possibility. This article contests this basic interpretation. I will argue that ILP is not a thesis about the explanation or ground of logical possibility. First, it abstracts from notions of actual existence; as a result, it cannot be a claim about ontological explanation. Second, in order to conceive of logical possibility, intellectual operation is necessary; thus, it is not the sort of property which can have an ontological explanation in the usual sense. Third and finally, insofar as logical possibility can be explained, Suárez turns out to explain it through God’s power. (shrink)

In this paper I explore modal metaphysics in regard to Francisco Suárez’s idea of real being, in order to track down an early model of the relationship between synchronical alternative states of affairs and the temporal frequency paradigm. In doing so this article will offer an interpretation of Suárez’s doctrine of eternal truths as found in Disputationes Metaphysicae d. 31, c. 12, § 38–§ 47. I argue that Suárez’s modal theory of real possibilities and logical possibilities should be (...) regarded as an actualist and essentialist form of modalism. (shrink)

The Coronavirus Disease 2019 pandemic, now a global health crisis, has surprised health authorities around the world. Recent studies suggest that the measures taken to curb the spread of the COVID-19 outbreak have generated issues throughout the population. Thus, it is necessary to establish and identify the possible risk factors related to the psychosocial and psychophysiological strain during the COVID-19 outbreak. The present extensive literature review assesses the social, psychological, and physiological consequences of COVID-19, reviewing the impact of quarantine measures, (...) isolation, vast human loss, social and financial consequences in the family’s economies, and its impact on the psychological health of the population. We also discussed the effect of psychophysiological factors, considering the impact of physical inactivity and modifications in nutritional habits, at psychological and physiological levels. The present review includes an actualized to date bibliography, articles for which were methodologically analyzed to verify they met the standards of quality and scientific accuracy. Authors understand the pandemic as a multifactorial event for which only a profound and extensive analysis would lead to better compression and efficient intervention in the near future. (shrink)

An English translation of the Second Disputation.

Este trabajo estudia el pensamiento teológico y filosófico de Francisco Suárez sobre la libertad. El problema de la Concordia entre gracia y libertad, suprime el concepto de naturaleza como quicio del pensamiento filosófico cristiano. La libertad se sitúa como causa metafísica formal en Suárez, no como fundamento a la manera moderna de un Yo afincado en sus solas fuerzas, sino como principio heurístico y creador de un ser lleno de posibilidades cuya afirmación: “soy libre”, sintetiza la filosofía suareciana, y (...) hace inteligibles las realidades dadas por la experiencia concreta para obtener una comprensión superior.Palabras llave: Francisco Suárez; teología neoescolástica; filosofía neoescolástica.This work studies Francisco Suárez’s theological and philosophical thought about freedom. The problem of agreement between grace and freedom suppresses the concept of nature as physis and its ethiology, as a referential shelf for Christian philosophical thought. In Suárez, freedom is placed as a formal metaphysical cause, not as a foundation in the modern manner of an “I” based on its sole forces, but as heuristic principle that creates a being full of possibilities, whose statement: “I am free”, synthesizes Suárez’s philosophy and makes intelligible the realities given by concrete experience in order to obtain a superior understanding.Palabras llave: Francisco Suárez; theology; liberty. (shrink)

This monograph presents new material on Francisco Suárez’s comprehensive theory of sense perception. The core theme is perceptual intentionality in Suárez’s theory of the senses, external and internal, as presented in his Commentaria una cum quaestionibus in libros Aristotelis De anima published in 1621. The author targets the question of the multistage genesis of perceptual acts by considering the ontological “items” involved in the procession of sensory information. However, the structural issue is not left aside, and the nature of (...) the relationship due to which our perceptions are mental representations of this or that object is also considered. The heuristic historiographical background includes not only the theories of classical authors, such as Aristotle and Aquinas, but also those of late medieval authors of the fourteenth century. These are headed by John Duns Scotus, John of Jandun, Peter Auriol and Peter John Olivi. Readers will discover the differences between Suárez’s and Aquinas’s views, as well as other sources that may have served as positive inspiration for the Jesuit’s theory. By considering the late medieval philosophy of the fourteenth century, this book helps, to a certain extent, to fill a gap in the historiography of philosophy regarding the link between late medieval and early modern scholasticism. In the first part of the book, the metaphysics of the soul and powers is considered. Chapters on the external senses follow, covering topics such as the sensible species, the causes of sensation, self-awareness, and the ordering of the external senses. A further chapter is devoted to the internal senses and the author argues that by reducing the number and functional scope of the interior senses Suárez deepens the gap between the external senses and the intellect, but he reduces it through emphasizing the unifying efficacy of the soul.This book brings a synthetic and unifying perspective to contemporary research and will particularly appeal to graduate students and researchers in theology and philosophy, especially philosophy of mind. (shrink)

Las Disputaciones metafísicas de Francisco Suárez se presentan como una reconstrucción de la filosofía fundamental que se organiza no ya según el esquema de la metafísica aristotélica, ni problemáticamente, al estilo del comentario escolástico, sino como un edificio ordenado que expone la noción de la realidad misma. Es la elaboración de un sistema que no sólo respete el orden tradicional de las cuestiones filosóficas, sino que configure una nueva estructura mediante la cual la metafísica, lejos de ser un freno (...) para el desarrollo científico pueda transformarse en el resorte para su progreso. Estamos ante una especie de Enciclopedia del saber filosófico estructurado sistemáticamente, sobre cuya base podrá el pensamiento europeo llevar a cabo su revolución racionalista. La Europa moderna e ilustrada, de Descartes a Kant, buscará, de un modo manifiesto o implícito, en las Disputaciones metafísicas la referencia escolar que precisa para su propia construcción teórica racional y crítica. En suma, la equilibrada doctrina de Suárez constituye el fulcro a partir del que podrán alzarse las más variadas doctrinas sobre el conocimiento humano, la naturaleza, la sociedad y la legitimación del poder político, que aún hoy constituyen la base de nuestra comprensión de la realidad. (shrink)

Despite the importance of Suárez’s defense of the freedom of the will at the threshold of early modern philosophy, his account has received scant recent attention. This paper aims partially to redress that neglect. Suárez’s position can be understood as a balancing act between desiring to attribute libertarian freedom to agents and desiring to maintain the will’s status as a rational appetite. Hence, he rejects an intellectualism that says that choices are necessitated by the intellect’s judgements (since he (...) does not think that the judgements themselves can be directly free), but affirms that only what is judged good can be chosen. (shrink)

This translation of Suarez's 54th Disputation documents the ancient Greek and Medieval sources of his discussion. It also considers Suarez's influence upon hitherto unknown late scholastic writers and the relevance of his intentionality theory to figures such as Descartes and Kant.

Annotation A central piece of Suarez's (1584-1617) metaphysics, which is considered important because it was not a commentary on Aristotle, and was used in universities and by both his fellow Jesuits and Protestant scholars and theologians for centuries. He deals with the formal principles of the nature of material substances, that is, their substantial form, which is central to his interpretation of Aristotelian realism. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).

La dispute metaphysique XXXI condense a travers la distinction scolastique de l'essence et de l'existence ce que Heidegger a pu appeler la these de l'ontologie medievale. La determination de la distinction de l'essentia et de l'existencia au coeur de l'etant fini comme distinction de raison, s'inscrit dans un processus de constitution de la metaphysique comme ontologie de l'essence. L'essence sera conceptuellement determinee et assimilee au possible et l'existence en tant que fait brut sera identifiee a un etat de facticite et (...) de precarite entitatives. Suarez redonne ainsi un nouvel elan a la problematique de l'essence et de l'existence en la degageant de la tradition pour l'ouvrir a la modernite de sa destinee. (shrink)

Francisco Suárez (1548-1617) was one of the most important philosophers and theologians of Early Modern Scholasticism. Although Suárez spent most of his academic career as a professor of theology, he is better known today for his Metaphysical Disputations (Salamanca, 1597). The present volume contains a facing-page English translation of Metaphysical Disputations III & IV. Metaphysical Disputation III offers a general treatment of the properties of being as such, while Metaphysical Disputation IV deals with one of these properties in particular, (...) transcendental unity. The Latin text contained in this volume introduces a significant number of corrections to the text of the Vivès edition, the one standardly used by scholars of Suárez, and thus more faithfully reproduces the text of the first edition. The volume also contains a lengthy introduction that provides a detailed survey of the disputations' principal claims and arguments. (shrink)

Les Disputationes Metaphysicae de Suarez, publiées en 1597, constituent le moment culminant de la pensée scolastique au siècle d’or espagnol. Mais elles traduisent également l’avènement d’un point de rupture dans le déploiement de l’histoire de la métaphysique. La notion de Disputatio s’inscrit, d’une part, dans le prolongement de la terminologie conceptuelle médiévale. D’autre part, que la Disputatio se dise métaphysique, laisse présupposer que sa finalité ne saurait se limiter au domaine logico-théologique. Il convient, certes, d’articuler les principes métaphysiques aux vérités (...) théologiques, mais également, d’effectuer par un geste inaugural, l’espace d’une autonomisation de la philosophie première par rapport à la théologie divine et surnaturelle.Avec l’œuvre de Suarez, la métaphysique est confrontée à la possibilité de la systématicité de son déploiement. (shrink)

In der Fünften metaphysischen Disputation behandelt Suárez (1548–1617) die Definition der Individualität, das metaphysische Individuationsprinzip (Individualdifferenz) und das physische Individuationsprinzip der Substanzen und Akzidentien. Die Darlegung berücksichtigt einen großen Teil der damals maßgeblichen Literatur und gibt zugleich einen Eindruck von der Schulphysik des späten 16. Jahrhunderts.

In der Fünften metaphysischen Disputation behandelt Suárez die Definition der Individualität, das metaphysische Individuationsprinzip und das physische Individuationsprinzip der Substanzen und Akzidentien. Die Darlegung berücksichtigt einen großen Teil der damals maßgeblichen Literatur und gibt zugleich einen Eindruck von der Schulphysik des späten 16. Jahrhunderts.

In der Fünften metaphysischen Disputation behandelt Suárez (1548-1617) die Definition der Individualität, das metaphysische Individuationsprinzip (Individualdifferenz) und das physische Individuationsprinzip der Substanzen und Akzidentien. Die Darlegung berücksichtigt einen großen Teil der damals maßgeblichen Literatur und gibt zugleich einen Eindruck von der Schulphysik des späten 16. Jahrhunderts.