On creation, conservation, and concurrence : metaphysical disputations 20, 21, and 22 / Francisco Suarez ; translation, notes, and introduction by Alfred J. Freddoso.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Suárez, Francisco, 1548-1617.

Contributor:

Freddoso, Alfred J.

Standardized Title:

Disputationes metaphysicae. 20-22. English

Language:

English

Latin

Subjects (All):

Causation--Early works to 1800.

Causation.

Necessity (Philosophy)--Early works to 1800.

Necessity (Philosophy).

Physical Description:

cxxiii, 267 pages ; 24 cm

Other Title:

On creation, conservation, & concurrence

Place of Publication:

South Bend, Ind. : St. Augustine's Press, 2002.

Language Note:

Translated from the Latin.

Summary:

The Spanish Jesuit Francisco Suarez (1548-1617) was an eminent Catholic philosopher-theologian whose Disputationes Metaphysicae were first published in Spain in 1597 and came to be widely studied throughout Europe during the seventeenth century. The Disputationes Metaphysicae not only constituted the high point of sixteenth-century scholastic metaphysics but exercised a great influence on early modern philosophers such as Descartes, Malebranche, and Leibniz.

This is the first time that Disputations 20-22 have been translated into English. These disputations, which deal with the divine actions of creation, conservation, and concurrence, form the last half of Suarez's treatment of efficient causality. The present work completes thus Freddoso's translation of Suarez's full account of efficient causality in the Disputationes Metaphysicae, the first half of which (Disputations 17-19) appeared from Yale University Press in 1994.

In Disputations 20-22 Suarez takes up a series of intriguing metaphysical questions, including: Are creation ex nihilo and divine conservation so much as metaphysically possible? Assuming that they are, what sort of agent and what sort of power do they require? How does creation ex nihilo differ from 'ordinary' causal action? How does creation differ from conservation? Can a single entity be created from eternity, or more than once? Can the power to create be conferred on a creature? Can an agent that creates use other things as instruments in the act of creation? Are there good reasons to believe that, beyond creation and conservation, God concurs as an immediate cause in every action of every creature? What is the nature of this concurrence? Is it compatiblewith the autonomy of created agents, especially free agents?

In his lengthy introduction, Freddoso situates the Disputationes Metaphysicae within their proper intellectual context, provides a basic introduction to scholastic ontology and treatments of efficient causality, and traces the main lines of argument proposed by Suarez in Disputations 20-22.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

ISBN:

1890318760

OCLC:

42682597