Suárez’s Metaphysics in Its Historical and Systematic Context

Book excerpt: Although the importance of Francisco Suárez has been, for some time already, generally recognized even outside the circles of historians of scholasticism, the wider context of his thought – i.e., the rich and diverse Renaissance and Baroque scholasticism – remains largely unexplored. This book is an attempt to contribute to the quest of putting Suárez’s metaphysics (a mere fragment of the whole of his intellectual legacy) into context, historical and systematic. Being the fruit of an international conference held in Prague in October 2008, it puts together a systematically ordered selection of papers devoted to general and specific topics of Suárezian metaphysics, with special respect to its sources and further impact. Part One explores in the first place the notion of being and the nature of metaphysics in general; Part Two then deals with more specific metaphysical topics such as the problem of universals, causality, relations, and God. The book will be of value not just to Suárez-scholars, but to anyone interested in the history of ideas in general and in the the intricacies of metaphysical thought at the verge of modernity in particular.