The article studies historically and systematically one of the most important aspects of Suárez’s metaphysics: the actualism, which consists in a reinterpretation of the Aristotelian doctrine of potency and act, which rejects the potency in its own sense and replaces it by the idea of an actuated potency (i.e., possessing an own being).

The will as first mover created in Francisco Suárez: The aim of this paper is to show that Francisco Suarez’s claim that the will is the prime mover of the human actions is grounded in his own metaphysical system. For that purpose, I argue that the will is not necessitated to act by any extrinsic efficient cause: nor by God’s grace, neither by the intellect, the law or fate. For all these active principles are either just a necessary condition for (...) the will’s act or something that necessitates the practical act of the intellect by which it guides the will, but does not affects the will itself. On the other hand, I argue that Suárez’s account on potency and act allows conceiving an efficient cause that is able to determine itself. Besides Suárez distinction between the transcendental sense of potency and act and the predicamental one –among which only the latter is relevant for this matte—, for him act does not perfect potency. Then the will can simultaneously be denominated patient and agent regarding its own action since it does not imply that the will can give itself something it previously lacked. (shrink)

THE mind is the locus of various dispositions, of developed sources and motives of action, which are not mere reflex habits but trained abilities and bents, tendencies, liabilities or inhibitions. Human knowing is more an intending of facts or states of affairs than a relation to them. Knowledge is not a predicamental relation. Consciousness is related to its object not as North Pole to South Pole, nor as container to contained, but as matter to form, and to the physical (...) form of the object of consciousness there corresponds the intentional form of the consciousness itself. To know reality is not to acquire it, grasp it, have it, possess it, contemplate it or dwell in it; it is to be informed by it i.e. intentionally to become it. Knowledge is the form rather than the cause of rational behaviour: technique, method, knack, skill, expertise, know-how, flair, strategic sense, prudence, taste, discretion, caution, judiciousness, decorum, conscientiousness, style, discipline, sagacity, discrimination, wisdom, respect for sense. Such principles operate not by description of nor prescription for, but by incarnation in and information of performance. It is, for instance, man’s respect for sense that is the form of a logically clear expression, and ideas are skills in the use of words. This human capacity and achievement is an intentional becoming, an actuation of the subject, bringing him to act. Yet, properly speaking, it is not action but passion. For knowing is an effect of which reality is the cause, and this causality is not a relation: actio est in passo—not in the agent, nor between the agent and the patient, but in the patient as from the agent, an actuation of the subject in dependence on the object. Of course it may be argued that non datur actio in distans, but far from requiring some intellectual ether, this only means that action and passion are not candidates for the application of spatial or temporal predicates. The known need not be close to the knower. True knowledge is the form of our reason when it is truly about matters of fact. It is not, then, a relation between subject and object, but a knowledge of states of affairs or facts constituted by interrelated objects which, to be known, must comprise some states of affairs of whose constituent objects some, at least, are knowing subjects. Inquiry is related to insight as searching to finding, or as trying to succeeding. Knowing is the second act or actualization of the intellect Thomists regard as second potency, first act, or accidental passive potency. But knowing is not a transitive activity. It is an achievement of intention, not an episode. It is a capacity, disposition, proneness or inclination, in so far as it connotes the abiding possibility of its contents’ polymorphic propositional and non-propositional expression in rational behaviour, which is an effect of knowing as an achievement, though it is also rightly said to be informed by know-how rather than caused by it. The act of self-knowledge consciously intends the self, but the self is intended as known and not as conscious. Thus, though true of consciousness, the distinction between consciously judging and consciously being tickled is not in consciousness but in knowledge of consciousness. Knowledge should be studied not in its products, but in its various expressions, especially in linguistic ones. For words and sentences are the most easily inspected class of things that we think in. (shrink)

The paper presents seven basic features of Francisco Suárez’s metaphysics. They are as follows: “Univocalization” of the concept of being and transcendental properties, “reification” of the act-potency doctrine, “ontologization” of individuality, “conceptualization” of the Scotist perspective, “existential” character of the concept of being, “epistemologization” and “methodologization” of metaphysics. Whereas the first five are indicated as remaining in the preserve of the traditional scholastic philosophy, the last two are taken as portending the methodological priority of the subjective states of (...) affairs of early modern “main-stream” philosophy. (shrink)

The definitive principle of actualism is that the world is composed wholly of actual or factual entities, including concreta like a horse and abstracta like his neigh, and the sums and the sets thereof, all on the one plane of particular and definite existents. There are no substrata of potency or prime matter, no forces or virtues, no blur of indefiniteness or press of tendency; no superstructure of unexampled essences or disembodied possibilities or transcendental acts of Be-ing. Our (...) actual entities, I specify further, are all either simple qualia, or relations belonging to one of three primitive categories, or some compound of these. The relational categories which I think sufficient and necessary are the whole-part or "merological" relations, resemblances or "comparisons," and locative distances and directions, not necessarily the physical geometry of space-time, but at least some analogous modes of deployment. "Factualism" here is a rhyming synonym of "actualism" and does not connote the very dubious doctrine of the young Wittgenstein that the world is the sum of "facts" in the sense of Sachverhalten. Nor does "actualism" connote the doctrine, so popular in New York and environs, that things must be active, though quite likely most of them are. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:284 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Although this is not the first time that Gentile has been translated into French (a major work of his, L'esprit, acte pur, was published in Paris in 1925), the fact remains nevertheless that his neo-Hegelian system of philosophy fell on deaf ears originally in France, due to the predominance then of Bergsonism and positivi.sm in different areas of French thought. However, as Michele F. Sciacca (...) (another commentator on Gentile) notes in the Preface, the Gentilian system of "actual idealism" should get a better hearing in France from now on, because the widespread interest in Hegel there since 1925 has prepared the ground for its proper reception. The Bibliography, for which Sciacca himself is responsible, includes a section on Gentile's own writings "concerning the national and political formation of Italy" (p. 14); but, significantly enough, those dealing directly with Fascism are all omitted. This omission seems a deliberate attempt to separate Gentile the philosopher from Gentile the Fascist. No matter how understandable psychologically and politically may be the motive here--to have French readers forget that Gentile was the philosopher of Fascism--the attempt itself at bibliographical expurgation, ironically, runs completely counter to the very accent of the Gentilian theory of "pure act" on the unity of thought and action in human experience and history. Rightly or wrongly, Gentile (in sharp contrast to Croce) saw in Fascism the political expression of that unity. As to the secondary sources, the Bibliography again is unnecessarily incomplete, citing as it does only one work in English on Gentile. The anthology closes with a critical note on Gentile's transcendental conception of immortality by the translator (Joseph Moreau), who argues that the "actualistic" philosophy, despite its "religious tone," defeats itself by ending up with an "Epicurean attitude" (p. 324) toward death and the afterlife. PATRICK ROMANELL University o/ Oklahoma Die Tragik in der Existenz des modernen Menschen bei G. Sirnmel. By Isadora Bauer. (Berlin: Duncker und Humblot, 1962. Pp. 94. DM 12.60.) Miss Isadora Bauer's book lends a salutory touch to contemporary philosophical literature, so much of which is abstract and removed from experience. Her treatise, on the other hand, has for its subject matter the human condition, its finitude, and its inescapable tragedy. Georg Simmel, an early twentieth-century philosopher, is less known in this country than he deserves to be. His "Lebensphilosophie," as Miss Bauer points out, although it was influenced by Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, found an original expression through him and foreshadowed in many ways the work of Husserl and the contemporary existential thinkers. Miss Bauer's presentation of Simmel's concept of the tragic is lucid and thorough and manages in a wonderful way to let us see through this one aspect the broad outlines of Simmel 's philosophy as a whole. In Simmel's formulation, life itself, unfolding in tragic antinomy of flux and form, of becoming and being, is the ultimate ground of all tragic conflict. The dynamic life process brings forth all forms and also endangers and destroys them over and over again. The human being encounters these opposites in all aspects of his experience: his existence is tragic at its core. "Moira," the ancient goddess who confronted the Greek hero as an alien power, is in Simmel's modern view of tragedy within man himself. She is the opposition between continuity and discontinuity, the mere stream of events and their form or meaning broken in tragic conflict. At this point, Simmel's dialectics leads to a "third realm," a "more BOOK REVIEWS 285 than" which is both immanent and transcendent, a kind of "coincidentia oppositorum" beyond logic and definition. It is the realm of the "person" within which, although the tragic conflict is not resolved, there arises the free self from whose non-dual perspective the unity and eternity of life are seen. Within this realm the individual gains an illumination the result of which is "amor fad," his free decision to affirm his being. In this act of decision lies the "meaning" and "value" of life. The substance and point of Miss Bauer's book is to show the connection between the metaphysical ground of Simmel... (shrink)

This paper analyses the relatively neglected topic of hierarchy in the philosophical foundation of human rights. It develops a transcendental-discursive approach. This approach develops the idea that all human rights could be derived from a small set of fundamental rights that are interconnected and that incorporate all ulterior possible specific rights. This set is then applied to an analysis of human rights as they have been formulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The claim is that this prior (...) set of transcendental rights is discursively implied whenever we talk about human rights. Thinking about the hierarchy of rights pragmatically means thinking about prioritising their implementation. Some consequences for practical philosophy and politics concerning the role of states, enterprises and world citizenship are then discussed. (shrink)

La refundición de la fenomenología que hemos emprendido desde las Meditaciones fenomenológicas (1992) nos ha conducido, aquí, a reexaminar la cuestión de la apercepción transcendental y la del cogito transcendental tal y como se conoce en Husserl. La problemática de la fenomenalización y del esquematismo fenomenológico de los fenómenos como nada más que fenómenos conducen a su descomposición en tres registros arquitectónicos, cuya estructura común es siempre la de una discordancia en la concordancia: el registro fuera del lenguaje (...) con sus proto-temporalizaciones inestables, el registro del lenguaje con sus temporalizaciones en presencia sin presente asignable, y el registro propiamente husserliano de los sentidos intencionales, temporalizándose en presentes. En este contexto, se examina la cuestión de la Stiftung propia de los a priori eidéticos husserlianos. (shrink)

Kant and Heidegger argue that our subjectivity escapes scientific explanation, while also providing the conditions that enable it. This understanding of the relationship between subjectivity and science places limits on the explanatory scope of the sciences. But what makes transcendental reflection on the structure of subjectivity possible in the first place? Fink argues that transcendental philosophy encounters its own limits in attempting to characterize its own conditions of possibility. I argue that the limits of science and transcendental (...) philosophy entail that nature cannot be conceived as a specific object, or as a totality of objects in the world, but only as the ontological ground of phenomenal manifestation in general. Nature is not identical with anything discoverable in either science or phenomenology; it is, rather, the origin from which discovery of phenomena proceeds. (shrink)

Naturalists seek to ground what exists in a set of fundamental metaphysical principles that they call ‘nature’. But metaphysical principles can’t function as fundamental explanatory grounds, since their ability to explain anything depends on the intelligibility granted by transcendental structures. What makes metaphysical principles intelligible, what unifies them, and allows them to characterize the being of worldly objects are the transcendental structures through which worldly objects are manifest. This means that the search for fundamental explanatory grounds must go (...) deeper than the postulation of brute metaphysical facts. But this search cannot end with transcendental structures either, since the mode of being of transcendental subjects also calls out for explanation. Conceiving of transcendental subjects through the concept of being-in-the-world ties the mode of being of subjects to the world they inhabit. What grounds the existence of worldly objects, and what grounds our existence as being-in-the-world is nature: a principle that is neither an object, nor a subject – a principle that makes possible our encounters with intelligible worldly things. (shrink)

‘Naturalizing phenomenology’ by limiting it to the ontology of the sciences is problematic on both metaphysical and phenomenological grounds. While most assessments of the prospects for a ‘naturalized phenomenology’ have focused on approaches based in Husserlian transcendental phenomenology, problems also arise for non-reductive approaches based in Heideggerian existential phenomenology. ‘Heideggerian cognitive science’ faces a dilemma. On the one hand, if it is directly concerned with the nature of subjectivity, and this subjectivity is assumed to be ontologically irreducible to its (...) physical enablers yet still metaphysically dependent on them, then Heideggerian cognitive science will either leave that metaphysical dependence an unexplained instance of supervenience, or ground it in speculation about brute metaphysical laws that have an unclear relationship to the ontology of the sciences. On the other hand, if Heideggerian cognitive science is not directly concerned with the nature of subjectivity, but is instead merely aimed at the development of a Heideggerian phenomenological psychology, then it doesn’t fully address the ontological implications of phenomenology’s transcendental approach, and so, while it might succeed in explaining the realization of psychological phenomena scientifically, the existence of subjectivity will remain inexplicable based on the ontology of the sciences. Neither strategy succeeds in ‘naturalizing phenomenology’: either rejects scientific naturalism, or makes its requirements trivial, while either rejects the transcendental dimension of phenomenology, or fails to address its ontological implications. (shrink)

This article analyzes self-disconnection as a phenomenological characterization of a destructive disease such as Alzheimer’s. We want to show that, in the most extreme cases of its development, the patient sinks into emotional disengagement because of the destructive plasticity that affects them. This isolation implies an emotional challenge for family members who observe that their loved one becomes disconnected and that they cannot do anything to prevent it. However, family members seek to assist their loved one in their marginalization. The (...) scope of this accompaniment reveals the human experience of consolation as an intersubjective response to this disconnection. The analysis of this disconnection reveals, in a paradoxical way, the human need to put distance in the face of extreme suffering, and at the same time shows its limit. The anthropological analysis of the devices of actio per distans can offer transcendental support to the ethics of tenderness in the face of the experience of illness. (shrink)

The universal validity of human rights is endangered by the charge that these rights are ‘Eurocentric’ and this means that human rights could be considered to be a product of illegitimate power relations developed by European cultures. I differentiate several levels of this charge and show that, logically, there is a genetic fallacy at its heart so the concept of human rights cannot be invalidated by it. Historically, human rights are indeed the result of the development of Western humanist thought (...) but we should differentiate the genesis of an idea from its validity. I outline how this development took place, how the argument of Eurocentrism developed, and why this argument can only function when the idea of human rights is taken for granted.Although the argument of Eurocentrism cannot be used to dismantle the idea of the universality of human rights, it still has an important function in a self-critical theory of universal human rights. It can be used as a hermeneutic tool that reflects on the formulation of these rights without endangering the universal claim of the idea itself. The quasi-transcendental legitimation of the idea of human rights developed by the Frankfurt philosopher and Habermas pupil Rainer Forst can be seen as a strategy of validation of the universality of human rights that is able to integrate arguments centred around Eurocentrism in a pluralistic hermeneutics of human rights. Forst’s theory can be read as a response to Amartya Sen’s criticism of transcendentalism as it is developed in his philosophy of justice. (shrink)

This paper wants to elucidate the meaning of "order of transcendentals". That matter has a preferential place in L. Polo's philosophy. This study is carried out through an analysis of concept of "meaning" and specially "the meaning of being".

This article discusses Suárez''s views concerning the transcendentals, that is, being and those attributes of it that extend to everything. In particular it explores Suárez''s notion of transcendentality and the way in which he conceived the transcendental attributes of being are related to it. It makes two claims: First, that Suárez has an intensional, rather than an extensional understanding of transcendentality; and, second, that Suárez''s understanding of truth and goodness, as expressing real extrinsic denominations based on real relations, appears (...) to contain an inconsistency. (shrink)

A translation of the Third and Fourth Disputations of Francisco Suárez.

Se abordan aquí algunas dificultades de la ‘psiquiatría fenomenológica’ directamente en relación con la aprehensión de las patologías ‘psíquicas’ o ‘mentales’ dentro de un modelo de ‘normalidad’ derivado de la psicología del siglo XIX de inspiración filosófica. Desde el concepto de ‘sospecha’ freudiano, los estudios de las patologías mentales de Binswanger, los análisis de algunos problemas nucleares sobre la síntesis pasiva husserliana, Richir pretende explorar una nueva ‘vía’, más allá de los límites de la psiquiatría fenomenológica, que incluya, de manera (...) cuasi estructural, las formas de temporalización y espacialización que funcionan en las ‘flexiones’ patológicas del Dasein. En otras palabras, trata de relacionar sistemáticamente la temporalización/espacialización husserliana, entendida como síntesis pasiva, con la filosofía de la afectividad, de la Befindlichkeit heideggeriana, que pone en juego la dimensión de una pasividad originaria del Dasein, entendida bajo el signo de facticidad. Para ello, Richir comenta detallada y magistralmente el conocidísimo §29 de Ser y Tiempo, con el objetivo no solo de captar la matriz transcendental de la división interna de la Stimmung y de la Verstimmung sino, también, mostrar justamente cómo puede logarse, por un lado, cierta articulación de lo que Husserl denomina como síntesis pasiva de la temporalización con la Stimmung y la Befindlichkeit heideggerianas y, por el otro, una posible vía de articulación entre Stimmungen normales y V erstimmungen patológicas, esto es, de una división interna a la Stimmung que haga posible al menos la versión patológica en la Verstimmung. (shrink)

Francisco Suárez’s account of the transcendentals in Disputationes Metaphysicae 3 has been noted by Aertsen, Courtine, Darge, and Sanz for its reductionism; Suárez argues that all proposed transcendentals reduce to unum, verum, and bonum. This scholarship overlooks a key feature of Suárez’s account. In addition to providing his own theory, Suárez also works out a meta-metaphysical framework with which it can be shown how any proposed metaphysical item, including those that do not fit into Suárez’s own theory, relates to Being; (...) he also works out rules for ordering these items. The way in which Suárez orders and reduces items related to Being involves several different kinds of reduction, and is more complex than current interpretations allow. Suárez’s framework and rules providea neutral standard for assessing the truth of any theory of transcendentals; this is shown through examining four accounts of the proposed transcendental aliquid using Suárez’s framework and rules. (shrink)

This essay argues that, just like liberalism and communism, fascist ideology was based on a specific philosophy of history articulated by Giovanni Gentile in the aftermath of World War I. Gentile’s actualist notion that history “belongs to the present” articulated an immanent vision of the relationship between historical agency, representation, and consciousness against all transcendental conceptions of history. I define this vision as historic because it translated the popular notion of historic eventfulness into the idea of the reciprocal immanence (...) of the historical and the historiographical act. I further show that the actualist philosophy of history was historically resonant with the Italian experience of the Great War and was culturally modernist. I insist, however, that the actualist catastrophe of the historical act was also genealogically connected to the Latin-Catholic rhetorical signification of “presence” that had sustained the development of Italian visual culture for centuries. Accordingly, I argue that the fascist translation of actualism into a historic imaginary was at the root of Italian fascism’s appeal to both masses and intellectuals. Fascism presented itself as a historic agent that not only “made history,” but also made it present to mass consciousness. In fact, I conclude by suggesting that the fascist success in institutionalizing a proper mode of historic representation in the 1920s, and a full-blown historic culture in the 1930s, may have also constituted a fundamental laboratory for the formation of posthistoric imaginaries. (shrink)

Hans Jonas developed in ‘Past and Truth’ (1991) a demonstration of the existence of God based on the ‘truth of past things’. And in ‘The Concept of God after Auschwitz’ (1984) he created a new myth of divine self-alienation in order to take away God’s responsibility for human misery. Both these texts were conceived as an alternative to a more Hegelian, objective idealist perspective on theology. This article shows that Jonas’s alternative does not fully succeed in this respect because his (...) arguments bring him back to an idealist perspective. His proof of God is revisited and explained using new insights recently developed by Robert Spaemann, whose interpretation of the proof makes it clear that many important critics of Jonas are too quick to reject his claims. The arguments of Jonas now seem to show a new strength even though they still fail to give an alternative to an objective idealist theological framework. (shrink)

This chapter offered in hommage to Jacques Taminiaux’s long and fruitful career reflecting on ontological, political, and aesthetic issues, starts following the lead of his reading of Heidegger’s interpretation of these issues, as following the same “Platonic filiation” as in most of German Idealism’s representatives. Namely, Heidegger seems to interpret praxis beyond all relation to interaction and interlocution, but also that his revaluation of the role of art in politics is because he confers the utmost importance upon poiêsis as an (...) “internal potency in the human understanding of Being, of the Lichtblick,” namely, as a “high-ranked theôria.” It primarily addresses the question of how theôria-Sophia, praxis-phronêsis, poiêsis-technê in their relatedness and oppositions, are connected with the “ethical” (practical) dimension of transcendental reduction, following some hints from Taminiaux’s (2004) reflections on Heidegger’s “metamorphosis” of Husserl’s phenomenological reduction (both eidetic and transcendental), as having proved that “reduction was at the core of Husserl’s theoretical project.” However, Taminiaux thinks that “it is not an exaggeration to claim that the contrast” he has just sketched “entails as many difficulties as those implicit in Husserl’s concept of reduction” (Taminiaux 2004, 44). Thus, the primal motivation for this text’s proposal stems from its interest in finding out whether this appealing and well-argued reading of the Greek and Platonic connivance between theôria-poiêsis in contrast to the fragility and contingency of human practical judgments and the human intrigue of our worldly abode—a reading retrieved by modern and contemporary German philosophers, including Heidegger—is in seamless accordance with the canonical contemporary interpretation of Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology and reduction. Or whether an alternative reading could be risked. What has characterized the success of Taminiaux’s original and piercingly acute reading of the history of philosophy is his close and severe scrutiny of texts transmitted by the tradition in dialogue with our experience of the “matters themselves.” Hence, in the wake of this essential and everlasting teaching, this text risks an alternative reading of the phenomenological reduction, specifically of its transcendental version, as an eminently practical—namely, ethical—achievement (Leistung), driven by a practical virtue, responsibility. (shrink)

In this paper I argue against the worried view that intentional properties might be epiphenomenal. In naturalizing intentionality we ought to reject both the idea that causal powers of intentional states must supervene on local microstructures, and the idea that local supervenience justifies worries about intentional epiphenomenality since our states could counterfactually lack their intentional properties and yet have the same effects. I contend that what's wrong with even the good guys (e.g. Dennett, Dretske, Allen) is that they implicitly grant (...) that causal powers supervene locally. Finally, I argue that once we see the truth of an anti-individualism which sees cognition as a fundamentally embedded activity, it becomes clear both that granting local supervenience is granting too much, and that intentional properties do work that mere neurological properties could never do. I also suggest how a transcendental argument for intentional potency might go. (shrink)

In this article, I aim to explore and demonstrate a specific mode of transcultural philosophical comparison by introducing an innovative theoretical model that I tentatively call the “method of sublation.” Through an illuminating case study centered around L i Zehou 李澤厚, a prominent figure credited with pioneering this method, its profound potential for generating creative innovation comes to light. L i Zehou skillfully combined Kant’s transcendental philosophy and Marx’s historical materialism, creating a unique synthesis that sublated traditional divides. This (...) sublation elevates the empirical, seamlessly integrating it into the transcendental domain. The foundation of this paper lies in providing a concise yet comprehensive overview of the method’s theoretical underpinnings, closely followed by a meticulous dissection of its operational structure. A tangible application of the method is then vividly demonstrated through L i Zehou’s adept process of seamlessly sublating static Kantian _a priori_ forms with the dynamic principles of Marxist social development theory, exemplifying the potency of this transformative approach in the realm of philosophy. (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)

Transcententals such as 'being', 'one', 'good', and 'something' are part and parcel of the medieval heritage in Aristotelian philosophy. Since transcendentals must be predicated of every particular thing, they are essential both to argumentation and to metaphysics, specifically to the theory of Platonic Forms. Lorenzo Valla (1407-1457) hence concluded that 'thing' (res) is the only transcendental, distinct from metaphysical universality that applies to God exclusively. Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499) in drawing upon Platonism as entailed in the metaphysics of universals and (...) in theology argued that 'one' must be the transcendental that precedes 'being' – at least in God. Related to that was his epistemological claim (which became popular in Cartesianism) that cognition of external reality is controlled by internal ideas, which in Platonic terms originate in God's ideas. Therefore it seemed logical to Tommaso Campanella (1568-1639) to infer that the first three transcendentals (being, true, good) produce the tri-une God in such a way that these refer to all other properties of things (epistemologically and ontologically). Those approaches were known to Francisco Suárez (1548-1617) who endeavored to keep the semantic and the ontological meaning of transcendentals combined by interpreting Platonic Forms as principles of understanding and of creation. In doing so he developed teachings of Thomas Aquinas. – The Jesuit Suárez is known as a leading Aristotelian of the Second Scholasticism. In this chapter his metaphysics is portrayed as an appropriation and a critique of Renaissance Platonism. (shrink)

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)

The material on the philosophy and theology of Francisco Suarez is collected and analyzed: Suarez's life path is presented, his works are described in detail, including the chronology of their publication and problems, Suarez's contribution to the dogmatic theology of Catholicism, philosophical psychology, metaphysics and philosophical theology as a separate part of metaphysics is summarized. The influence of Suarez's thought on the major philosophers of Modern times is shown.

The present dissertation consists of a developmental account of the problem of the ontological status of individuality as manifested initially in the metaphysical thought of Aristotle and subsequently developed by Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, and Francis Suarez. ;The philosophical context for the problem of individuality's ontological status is set by the theme, prominent in Greek philosophy, of unity as a mark of what is most real and most perfect. The historical precedent for viewing individuality as fitting under this theme, and (...) thus as having ontological importance, is provided by Aristotle's doctrine of primary substance, which characterizes individuality as a type of unity that pertains to the most fundamental aspects of reality such as this man or this horse. Though this doctrine highlights the ontological primacy of individual entities, the specific issues of where individuality fits on the ontological map, and what role it plays in constituting substances, are discussed only indirectly by Aristotle. These matters remain mostly unaddressed until the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, in which individuality becomes a focal point of philosophical discussion due to the integration of Aristotelian metaphysical thought into Christian doctrine and the accompanying recognition of individuality as a topic of critical importance. ;The problem of individuality's ontological status can be summarized in terms of two questions. First, what kind of thing is individuality, i.e., where does it fit on the ontological map? Second, how is individuality related to the other metaphysical aspects of a thing, such as their form, common nature, etc.? Aquinas's treatment of this problem reveals strong roots in the Aristotelian doctrines of substance and of unity as a transcendental attribute of being. Scotus's account likewise is developed in the context of the aforementioned Aristotelian notions, but is more extensive than Aquinas's and more suggestive of individuality's importance given Scotus's identification of metaphysics as the science of the transcendentals and of individuality as a transcendental. Suarez's treatment of the ontological status of individuality builds upon these notions, synthesizing the insights of his predecessors to formulate an account that is more explicit, more precise, and in many ways more rigorous than his predecessors' accounts. (shrink)

Darge acknowledges that Suárez does in some manner continue the line of Avicenna and Duns Scotus. But focusing on the theme of the transcendental properties of being, which are reduced to unity, truth, and goodness, or, concretely, the one, the true, and the good, he sees the Suarezian metaphysics as a revival and a revision of pre-Scotist teaching, found especially in St. Thomas Aquinas’s De veritate I, a. 1. For his understanding of such pre-Scotistic doctrine, Darge follows in a (...) thoughtful but not slavish way Prof. Jan Aertsen, under whose direction the present volume first appeared at the Thomas Institut in Köln as its author’s Habilitationschrift. (shrink)

Brentano’s introduction of the concept of intentionality into contemporary philosophy was indebted to scholastic sources. Among these, Suárez has not been sufficiently addressed, even though his idea of transcendental relation is relied upon by Brentano to describe the intentional relation. In addition, in his examination of being as truth in Suárez, Brentano manifests his assumption of the principle of immanence. Finally, this article argues that, even in his reist period, Brentano continued to understand knowledge as a relation.

Scotus’ mark on Suárez’s metaphysics can be perceived not only in his elaboration of intellectual knowledge of the singular, but also in the idea that prime matter is not pure potency, but possesses its own act, as well as in the thesis that states that the accident possesses too its own being. Of these two ideas, in addition to the tendency towards hypostatisation both regarding matter and accident, comes the breakdown of the unity of material substance both in the (...) substantial and accidental planes, something that Suárez, in a way very similar to Scotus, tries to remedy by appealing to the modes of union. Lastly, a fundamental consequence of the hypostatisation of the accident is phenomenism, as seen in the works of authors such as Locke and Kant. (shrink)

the main relevant philosophical aspect in Suárez’s interpretation of the transcendentals is his doctrine of the notions res and aliquid . therefore, after analyzing the nature and the number of the transcendentals, as well as the relationship between them and the first principles, the article goes into a detailed historical analysis of the notions res and aliquid. With precedents in Avicenna and Duns Scotus, the ens is understood according to Suarez, negatively, as it is not nothing and, in such sense, (...) it is something ( aliquid ) and, positively, as it has got a quidditas and, therefore, it is res. the question of nothing ( nihil ) is thus introduced into modern metaphysics. What’s more, the said interpretation is one of the fundamental conditions of the transformation of metaphysics in modern ontology . thus, in the post- Cartesian context of Schulmetaphysik, and its aliquitas (as non-nihil ) and its quiditative character (as res ) being presumed, the ens will be understood as an intelligible . through that, a Copernican revolution commenced that anticipated Kant himself. (shrink)

Il breve saggio sul concetto di lex in Suárez evidenzia come la nota definizione di Tommaso d’Aquino, pur rappresentando un punto di riferimento imprescindibile nel dibattito giuridico, morale e teologico, possa esser riscritta. E l’innovazione del gesuita spagnolo si delinea in una definizione di legge, ove i termini intelletto e volontà sono posti in modo differente e il dialogo tra questi concetti generi una costruzione morale, che tenga conto della libertà della volontà dall’intelletto e da un ordo precostituito.

In this paper I study the attribute of God ́s omnipotence in Francisco Suárez. The need, perfection and infinity of the divine essence qualify this attribute crucially; potence belongs to God himself, who –as an infinite being- contains all possible perfection. God contains all by its nature, because He contains every possibility, which is infinite. Thus, undestanding Himself, God understands everything, because He contains all in its essence.

The article examines the first fruit of Leibniz´s philosophical endeavour, which is his baccalaureate thesis Disputatio metaphysica de Principio Individui, on thebackground of the comparison with Suárez´s conception of individual unity in his Disputationes Metaphysicae. Despite Suárez´s more differentiated attitude to the issue of individuation in general, the author is convinced that one can find strong parallels between both authors, namely the following: purely ontological treatment of the problem of the principle of individuation; search for a single principle which is (...) common both to material and nonmmaterial substances; nominalist tendency, which is apparent not only in the positive statements of the two authors, but also in their criticisms of rival solutions in general, and theScotist conception in particular. The similarities are not limited only to the principle of individuation or to the problem of individual unity in general but they also extend to the problem of the distinction between essence and existence, the conception of transcendental unity and its relation to ens, or to the problem of reification of hylemorphic components of material substances. (shrink)

È cosa nota che la nozione di relazione sia uno dei pilastri teorici della dottrina metafisica e della teologia di molti autori Scolastici medievali e moderni e sia alla base della loro visione cosmologica del mondo. Questo saggio intende ricostruire la nozione di relazione reale nel pensiero di Francisco Suárez, esplorando la sua articolazione interna in concetti inferiori e affrontando alcuni nuclei problematici tipici del dibattito scolastico. La prima sezione dell’articolo prende in considerazione il concetto estensivo di relazione reale, tracciando (...) la distinzione fondamentale tra relazioni categoriali e relazioni trascendentali: mentre le prime sono degli accidenti che devono soddisfare tre condizioni per esistere (l’esistenza di un soggetto, di un fondamento e di un termine), le seconde non sono accidenti e fanno direttamente parte dell’essenza della cosa a cui si riferiscono. La seconda parte si concentra invece sull’analisi del concetto intensivo di relazione, giungendo alla definizione di relazione reale come una referenza reale fondata sul primo elemento della relazione (il fondamento) e diretta verso il secondo (il termine) come qualcosa di diverso da sé. Infine, l’ultima sezione del saggio si sofferma sul problema della natura della distinzione tra la relazione e il suo fondamento. Dopo aver esaminato l’opinione di eminenti autori, ossia Tommaso d’Aquino, Duns Scoto, Durando da San Porciano e Pedro da Fonseca, Suárez assume la posizione nominalistica che riduce lo statuto ontologico della relazione a quello del suo fondamento. Su questo punto la dottrina di Suárez si discosta da quella di Ockham solo per l’aggiunta della tesi della distinzione di ragione tra la relazione e il suo fondamento, una posizione inammissibile per i nominalisti. _ It is commonly known that the notion of relation is one of the theoretical pillars of the metaphysical and theological doctrine of many medieval and modern scholastic authors, determining their cosmological world view. This essay aims to reconstruct the notion of real relation in Francisco Suárez's thought, exploring its internal articulation in lower concepts and addressing some problematic cores peculiar to the scholastic debate. The first section of the paper considers the extension of the concept of real relations, drawing the fundamental distinction between categorical and transcendental relations: while the former are accidents that must fulfil three conditions in order to exist (the existence of a subject, a foundation and a term), the latter are not accidents and are thus part of the essence of the thing they refer to. The second part focuses on the intension of the concept of real relation, concluding by defining it as a real reference based on the first element of the relation (the foundation) and directed towards the second (the term) as something else. Finally, the last section of the essay addresses the problem of the nature of the distinction between the relation and its foundation. After examining some eminent authors’ position, namely Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, Durandus of Saint-Pourçain and Pedro da Fonseca, Suárez assumes the Nominalist position which reduces the ontological status of the relation to that of its foundation. In this regard, Suárez's doctrine differs from Ockham's only by adding the thesis of the distinction of reason between the relation and its foundation, a position unacceptable for Nominalists _. (shrink)

From 1801–1807 Schelling continued to refine his early attempts at Naturphilosophie in the metaphysical framework of a transcendental Spinozism that he initially called Identity Philosophy. While mathematics and geometry provided the model for identity and its quantitative differentiation in early versions of identity theory, from 1804–1807, logic and theory of language offered a model of identity capable of unknotting persistent Spinozistic puzzles such as the connection between natura naturans and natura naturata—the absolute and its potencies—and the ontological status of (...) the individual. Schelling’s initial concepts of identity as “indifference” or “the identity of identity and difference,” themselves the offshoot of meditations on polarity and repeating structure in the philosophy of nature, make way for logical concepts such as “expression” or “affirmation” and the propositional operator “bond” or “Position” found in the copula. The new essays approach ultimate reality through Spinoza’s disjunction of God or nature, or productive and produced nature; so in addition to identity theory, a general metaphysics of nature prefaces treatments of specific natural phenomena. These dual metaphysics of God and nature inject a dynamic or expressive movement into identity that is not yet the unfolding of identity as grounding-and-division that Schelling will articulate in the 1809 Freedom Essay, but it carries a sense of motion and differentiation—or evolution and unfolding—not found in his earlier attempts. The entire identity philosophy period is best viewed as a step in Schelling’s lifelong project of reworking Spinoza by adding life and spirit to nature. (shrink)

This article outlines a new theory of humor. The concept of humor is developed in the sense of five dialectical levels, respectively, sequential phenomenalities of humorous consciousness. These range from a level of most inferior humor up to a stage of most sublime humor. Systematically speaking, humor is viewed from an enhanced perspective of transcendental philosophy, namely as a medium of self-unfolding practical reason. It is considered as a complementary potency to the practical force of the latter’s regulative (...) principle, and it fulfils several important functions. The first section provides basic definitions of concepts like humor, sublimity, comicality, etc. Here, the five phenomenalities of humor are introduced. The second section explores and develops these contents more in detail. Some references to the German-speaking tradition in the philosophy of humor provide further input for discussion. The third section presents a thought experiment. Imaginary humorous reactions of Socrates to ridicule and hostility are analyzed in the sense of the present theory. (shrink)

Fichte offers separate analyses of the conditions for the possibility of representing or referring to (i) material objects and (ii) other minds – extra-subjective entities of importantly distinct sorts. These analyses are importantly akin, in that both postulate, as a necessary condition for the mental accomplishment under consideration, some sort of basic incapacity or limitation that is partly constitutive of human rationality. But the two accounts also involve interestingly different understandings of the nature and implications of the basic constraints in (...) question. As a first approximation, we can say that, for Fichte, (i) a rational being posits a putatively mind-independent object only if that being’s self-initiated mental activity encounters a pre- or proto-objective “check” or “affront” (Anstoß), and (ii) a rational being can first become concretely conscious of its own capacity for rational self-determination only as the addressee of a “summons” (Aufforderung) that calls upon it to actuate that very capacity. -/- In this essay I roughly reconstruct the indicated arguments. In the process, I endeavor to show that Fichte does not suppose that either argument firmly backs philosophical assent to the existence of material objects or of other minds. On the contrary: the goal of his professed ‘deductions’ of our everyday ‘convictions’ concerning such things is not to philosophically legitimate those prephilosophical beliefs. Instead, the aim of these arguments is to vindicate Fichte’s transcendental idealism – which, if anything, epistemically undermines said beliefs – by demonstrating that any experience that is putatively ‘of’ such things has, as its necessary and sufficient conditions, nothing but states and activities of the I. Thus, in the case of material objects, a radical difference manifest within the I – self-initiated rational activity versus “simple sensation” – is ‘set forth’ (vorgestellt) in a representation (Vorstellung) of an extra-subjective bearer of sensed qualities. And – much more controversially – in the case of other minds, a demand that the I (qua pure reason, constitutively committed to its own unlimited self-activity and efficacy) makes upon itself (qua rational individual capable of intelligent self-determination) is outwardly depicted as an appeal originating from an extra-subjective source. (shrink)

Nature and Spirit: An Essay in Ecstatic Naturalism develops an enlarged conception of nature that in turn calls for a transformed naturalism. Unline more descriptive naturalisms, such as those by Dewey, Santayana, and Buchler, ecstatic naturalism works out of the fundamental ontological difference between nature naturing(natura naturans) and nature natured (natura naturata). This difference underlies all other variations within a generic conception of nature. The spirit operates within a generic conception of nature. The spirit operates within a fragmented nature and (...) has its own unique locations. Ecstatic naturalism does not eulogize spirit nor impose a process theodicy upon nature as a whole but carefully describes the ways in which spirit emerges from finite locations within the world. Methodologically, the text radically regrounds phenomenology so that it can work more closely with a metaphysics seeking the most generic forms of nature. The move from a transcendental phenomenology, which rests upon a profound misconception of the parcel of a radicalized naturalism, makes it possible to show how all orders of relevance are related to nature and to the spirit. This, in turn relocates the human process, with its dialectical tension between finitude and transendence, and places the self fully within the emergent structures of the community of interpreters as that community lives out of hope. The concept of worldhood is regrounded in pragmatic and semiotic terms, thus putting pressure on Heidegger's formulations. Peirce's pragmatic categorical structure is used to show how worldhood differs from any other order within the world. The correlation of the potencies of nature, which are presemiotic and preordinal, wit the orders of the world itself, is possible only through an ordinal phenomenology that remains attuned to the fundamental difference between nature naturing (the potencies) and nature natured (the orders of the world). Finally, the text redefines the divine natures in the light of an ecstatic naturalism that sees god as an order within the world that experiences the fragmented quality of nature. Process theology is challenged for its inability to grasp the tensions between god and the encompassing. Four divine natures are laid bare as they relate to nature and to each other. The work concludes with a description of the divine life in the face of the encompassing. (shrink)

Arriaga is an early modern scholastic who recognizes the importance of relations to philosophical discussions. He offers a classification of different kinds of relations, focusing on the distinction between categorial relations and transcendental relations. I suggest that this distinction might be seen as akin to one version of the modern distinction between external and internal relations. Like Suárez, whom he characterizes as a “giant among the scholastics,” Arriaga offers a reductionist account of categorial relations. He criticises Suárez’s account, however, (...) for formally identifying a relation with the foundation in one relatum, something Suárez does in order to preserve a real distinction between converse relations. Arriaga, in contrast, argues that a categorial relation is formally identical to the foundation and terminus. Arriaga gives less attention to transcendental relations, even though he thinks they are real relations, but I offer some suggestions for how he may be thinking about them. (shrink)

In spite of the fact that ideas in line with the world-outlook format of realism (as also those in the format of irrealism) come back already to Antiquity, it was not earlier than from the end of the 18th century that the metaphilosophical concept under discussion has begun to evolve. The initial becoming of the concept of philosophical realism during score of years from the first edition of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (1781) to Schelling’s System of Transcendental Idealism (...) (1801) is just being dealt with in this paper. The term came about eighty years later than “idealism” (introduced in 1702 by Leibnitz), and Kant inaugurated it most likely to distance his system from that of Berke­ley to whom he was indebted, it seems, still more than to Hume (their congeniality is spe­cified in the article in the mirror of intercultural philosophy, i.e. in both systems, just as in the Buddhist vijňānavāda, our persuasion that we can perceive outer things as existing independently from our mind was regarded as the radical illusion of mind). The author stands up for Friedrich Jacobi by offering specification of the advantages of “the robust realism” over “feigned” Kantian realism. Meanwhile, he suggests also the distinction be­tween the transcendental idealistic doctrine of Kant and realistic potency of his philosophy, which, in his opinion, becomes more intelligible after Hilary Putnam’s theory of realism. In this context the Kantian term “transcendental realism” itself could acquire not negative but mostly affirmative connotations. The author also suggests actualization of Kant’s “re­alistic capacity” for today’s ontology by highlighting his implicit differentiation of the layers of reality. In contrast, Fichtean and Schellingean dialectical sports with cor­relations of idealism and realism could be of interest, in the author’s view, only to histori­ans of philosophy. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with some aspects of Kant’s transcendental idealism, in particular the claim that objects of experience are nothing but representations in us, and its connection to the distinction of things in themselves and appearances. This claim has prompted phenomenalist readings which have rightly been rejected almost unanimously. Instead it has been suggested to account for Kant’s distinction in terms of mind-dependent or subject-relativized properties and properties which are not mind-dependent or subject-relativized. Along this line, the “nothing (...) but representation”-claim is then sometimes understood in terms of the secondary-quality analogy, which Kant endorses in the Prolegomena, but rejects in the first Critique. As an alternative, I attempt to interpret Kant along the lines of Suárez’s formal/objective distinction and Scotus’s modal explication of being. (shrink)

This paper offers an assessment of some of the central aspects of Edith Stein’s conception of intentional acts proposed in Potency and Act. Studies Towards a Philosophy of Being. Her account hinges upon a combination of Thomistic and Husserlian concepts. She borrows from Aquinas two conceptual pairs that are central to his metaphysics and theory of knowledge: the actuality-potency dichotomy; and the distinction between sensible and intelligible species. The distinction and relevant articulation between sensible and intelligible species provide (...) Stein with the basis to present her own conception of intentionality (with special focus on perception): the sensible species is regarded as the correlate of the object’s Gestalt; by contrast, the intelligible species is mobilised to account for what Husserl labels noesis-noema correlation. But Stein’s ambition is also to inscribe her account of the species sensibilis within an overall (critical) interpretation of Husserl’s transcendental idealism. This work was supported by the Czech Science Foundation, financing the project “Intentionality and Person in Medieval Philosophy and Phenomenology” (GAČR 21-08256S). (shrink)