Abstract

Central to early modern Scholastic theories of artistic production (whether the artist is God or a human being) is the term “idea,” which, in the traditionalaccount, signifies “that which is being imitated in the process of artistic production.” Francisco Suárez rejects this account, on the grounds that, by making theidea depend on being imitated, it obviously leaves the idea without any (efficient) causal role. On his alternative account, the exemplary cause governing the production process is not an “objective representation” or preconception, but the act of thought itself, the “formal representation” by which the mind is directly referred to the thing outside. This does not imply that this thing has to pre-exist the act of thought, because for Suárez this act is a kind of focusing (mentis acies), or, more metaphorically, “a light which goes before [praeit], showing the way, the mode and the terminus of the operation.”