page_title: Francisco Suárez
section_title: Metaphysics
hierarchical_section_title: Francisco Suárez / Philosophical thought / Metaphysics
caption_attribution_description: Español: Portada del libro De incarnatione (parte primera). Publicado en latín por Francisco Suárez en Venecia, edición de 1745.
context_page_description: Francisco Suárez, S.J. was a Spanish Jesuit priest, philosopher and theologian, one of the leading figures of the School of Salamanca movement, and generally regarded among the greatest scholastics after Thomas Aquinas. His work is considered a turning point in the history of second scholasticism, marking the transition from its Renaissance to its Baroque phases. According to Christopher Shields and Daniel Schwartz, "figures as distinct from one another in place, time, and philosophical orientation as Leibniz, Grotius, Pufendorf, Schopenhauer, and Heidegger, all found reason to cite him as a source of inspiration and influence."
context_section_description: For Suárez, metaphysics was the science of real essences (and existence); it was mostly concerned with real being rather than conceptual being, and with immaterial rather than with material being.  He held (along with earlier scholastics) that essence and existence are the same in the case of God (see ontological argument), but disagreed with Aquinas and others that the essence and existence of finite beings are really distinct. He argued that in fact they are merely conceptually distinct: rather than being really separable, they can only logically be conceived as separate.
  On the vexed subject of universals, he endeavored to steer a middle course between the realism of Duns Scotus and the nominalism of William of Occam. His position is a little bit closer to nominalism than that of Thomas Aquinas. Sometimes he is classified as a moderate nominalist, but his admitting of objective precision (praecisio obiectiva) ranks him with moderate realists. The only veritable and real unity in the world of existences is the individual; to assert that the universal exists separately ex parte rei would be to reduce individuals to mere accidents of one indivisible form. Suárez maintains that, though the humanity of Socrates does not differ from that of Plato, yet they do not constitute realiter one and the same humanity; there are as many "formal unities" (in this case, humanities) as there are individuals, and these individuals do not constitute a factual, but only an essential or ideal unity ("In such a way, that many individuals, which are said to be of the same nature, are so: only through the operation of the intellect, not through a substance or essence of things which unites them"). The formal unity, however, is not an arbitrary creation of the mind, but exists "in the nature of the thing, prior [ontologically] to any operation of the intellect".
  His metaphysical work, giving a remarkable effort of systematisation, is a real history of medieval thought, combining the three schools available at that time: Thomism, Scotism and Nominalism. He is also a deep commentator of Arabic or high medieval works. He enjoyed the reputation of being the greatest metaphysician of his time. He thus founded a school of his own, Suarism or Suarezianism, the chief characteristic principles of which are: 
  the principle of individuation by the proper concrete entity of beings
  the rejection of pure potentiality of matter
  the singular as the object of direct intellectual cognition
  a distinctio rationis ratiocinatae between the essence and the existence of created beings
  the possibility of spiritual substance only numerically distinct from one another
  ambition for the hypostatic union as the sin of the fallen angels
  the Incarnation of the Word, even if Adam had not sinned
  the solemnity of the vow only in ecclesiastical law
  the system of Congruism that modifies Molinism by the introduction of subjective circumstances, as well as of place and of time, propitious to the action of efficacious grace, and with predestination ante praevisa merita
  the possibility of holding one and the same truth by both science and faith
  the belief in Divine authority contained in an act of faith
  the production of the body and blood of Christ by transubstantiation as constituting the Eucharistic sacrifice
  the final grace of the Blessed Virgin Mary superior to that of the angels and saints combined.
  Suárez made an important investigation of being, its properties and division in Disputationes Metaphysicae (1597), which influenced the further development of theology within Catholicism. In the second part of the book, disputations 28-53, Suárez fixes the distinction between ens infinitum (God) and ens finitum (created beings). The first division of being is that between ens infinitum and ens finitum. Instead of dividing being into infinite and finite, it can also be divided into ens a se and ens ab alio, i.e., being that is from itself and being that is from another. A second distinction corresponding to this one:ens necessarium and ens contingens, i.e., necessary being and conting
caption: De incarnatione, pars prima (1745).
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