Metaphysical Disputations II

Metaphysical Disputations Volume 5 - English Translation, 2025

Francisco Suárez’s Metaphysical Disputations (Vol. V, Disputations 30–33). This volume develops natural theology and the essence–existence problematic in creatures. Disp. XXX surveys what natural reason can know about the First Being: that God is altogether perfect, infinite, pure act and simple; lacks substantial and accidental composition; whether “attributes” are properties of God or of the divine essence; and the demonstrations of immensity, immutability and eternity (with the question of immutability’s compatibility with freedom), unicity, invisibility, incomprehensibility and ineffability, life and intellect, and finally divine knowledge, will, power, and action. Disp. XXXI treats the essence–existence question in finite being: whether they are really distinct, what essence “is” prior to production, potency and act, whether an intrinsic “existence” actuates essence, the causes of created existence (especially the proximate efficient cause), the effects of existence and its difference from essence, its subject and simplicity/composition, separability, the nature of composition from being and essence, and created being’s dependence on the First Being. Disp. XXXII divides created being into substance and accident, asking about immediacy/sufficiency and analogical status. Disp. XXXIII considers created substance in general: what “substance” signifies, its division into incomplete/complete, and whether substance is rightly divided into first and second.

Metaphysical Disputations Volume 3 - English Translation, 2025

Francisco Suárez’s Metaphysical Disputations (Vol. III, Disputations 15–20). This volume pivots from form to efficient causality and culminates in creation. Disp. XV treats the formal substantial cause: whether substantial forms exist in material things, how they are educed from matter, whether matter must temporally precede, whether the form is made per se, what the proper nature and causality of substantial form are, how forms cause, what their effects are, how matter depends on form (and vice versa), whether one substance has only one form, and what “metaphysical form” is with its corresponding “matter” and causality. Disp. XVI addresses the accidental formal cause: whether all accidents truly cause formally (and what), and whether accidental forms are educed from a subject’s potency. Disp. XVII defines the efficient cause and maps its principal distinctions. Disp. XVIII analyzes the proximate efficient cause and the requisites for causing: whether created things truly produce effects; by what principles substances act on substances and accidents; which accidents can be principles of action; whether accidents alone can produce accidents and whether merely instrumentally; and the conditions for action (real distinction from the patient, simultaneity/proximity, proportion/dissimilarity), including whether action itself is the efficient cause’s proper causal principle and whether acting implies corruption. Disp. XIX investigates necessary vs. free operation, including whether any created causes act by necessity, whether some act freely, how such freedom stands under the First Cause’s concurrence, where freedom formally resides, how reason determines free causes, the root of defect, the scope of indifference, whether freedom persists in actu, whether cosmic contingency depends on free causes, and the standing of fate, chance, and fortune among causes. Disp. XX treats the First Efficient Cause and creation: whether creation is possible or even necessary by natural reason, whether infinite power is required (and thus creation is proper to God), whether any instrument can create, whether creation is something in the creature distinct from the creature itself, and whether “newness of being” belongs to creation.

Metaphysical Disputations Volume 7 - English Translation, 2025

Francisco Suárez’s Metaphysical Disputations (Vol. VII, Disputations 43–47). The focus shifts to act/potency, habits, contrariety, intensification, and relation. Disp. XLIII addresses potency and act: their division into active and passive, whether they differ in reality or only in reason, the divided term and definition, whether every potency is natural/implanted, the correspondence of potencies to acts, and the priority of act to potency (in duration, perfection, definition, and knowledge). Disp. XLIV treats habits: their existence, nature, and subject; whether locomotive powers acquire habits; whether brutes have habits; intellectual habits; whether habits are for effecting acts, what they do to acts, which acts they affect, whether acts efficiently cause habits, whether one or many acts cause them, how habits are perfected, their extensive augmentation and unity, their diminution and corruption, and the genera/species of habits (especially practical vs. speculative). Disp. XLV analyzes contrariety of qualities: kinds of opposition, the proper definition of contraries and how they differ from other opposites, whether contrariety is found in all and only qualities, and whether contraries can coexist. Disp. XLVI studies the intensification of qualities: whether intensible qualities are indivisible or composed of degrees, why intensification belongs to some accidents and not all, by what action/change intensive latitude is acquired, and whether there are definite termini of increase/remission. Disp. XLVII develops real relation: whether relation is a true genus distinct from the others; its real or modal distinction from substance and absolute accidents; kinds of relation and which are predicamental; how predicamental and transcendental respects differ; the essence/definition of relation; its subject, foundation, and terminus (and the distinction between foundation and terminus); Aristotle’s threefold foundation; relations founded on number/unity, power/action, and measure; the sufficiency of this division; whether third-kind relations are non-mutual; what the formal terminus of relation is; how the category is constituted down to individuals; and the common properties of relatives.

Metaphysical Disputations Volume 6 - English Translation, 2025

Francisco Suárez’s Metaphysical Disputations (Vol. VI, Disputations 34–42). This volume treats the supposit/person, immaterial and material substances, and the opening of the doctrine of accidents (quantity and quality). Disp. XXXIV studies first substance or suppositum and its distinction from nature: identity with person/hypostasis; whether the supposit adds a positive real mode; whether the distinction from nature is by accidents/individuation (and so absent in spirits); the nature and relation of created subsistence to nature and supposit; its indivisibility/incommunicability; its efficient/material causes; whether subsistence has causality; attribution of actions to supposita; and, for second substances, concrete vs. abstract and how to constitute the highest notion of substance and its predicamental coordination. Disp. XXXV treats created immaterial substances: whether their existence can be proved by natural reason, what can be known of their quiddity and essential attributes, and what can be known of their intellect, knowledge, will, power, and efficacy. Disp. XXXVI considers material substance: its essential notion and relation to corporeal substance; whether its essence is in form alone or also in matter; and whether substance is something over and above matter, form, and their union. Disp. XXXVII asks whether “accident in general” expresses one objective nature and whether inherence constitutes its common nature. Disp. XXXVIII compares accident to substance regarding priority in time and in knowledge. Disp. XXXIX divides accident into nine supreme genera, assessing immediacy, sufficiency, and whether the division is univocal or analogical. Disp. XL treats continuous quantity: what quantity is; whether bulk-quantity is distinct from substance and qualities; whether quantity’s essence consists in measure; whether its formal effect is divisibility/distinction/extension; whether points, lines, and surfaces are real entities distinct from bodies and from one another; whether line and surface are proper species; whether place is its own species; whether motion or its extension is a proper species; and whether time is per se a distinct quantity. Disp. XLI treats discrete quantity and the coordination of the category: whether it is a proper species, whether found in spiritual things, whether speech is a true species, how the genus/species are ordered, and the properties of quantity. Disp. XLII treats quality in general: its common notion; division into four species; whether this division is sufficient and the species mutually distinct; how duplicated terms signify differences; and the properties that belong to quality.

Metaphysical Disputations Volume 4 - English Translation, 2025

Francisco Suárez’s Metaphysical Disputations (Vol. IV, Disputations 21–29). Here Suárez develops conservation, concurrence, and finality before turning to God and the first division of being. Disp. XXI considers conservation: whether natural reason proves creatures’ continual dependence on the First Cause, what conservation is and how it differs from creation, and whether God alone conserves. Disp. XXII examines divine concurrence: whether God immediately operates in all creaturely actions, whether concurrence is a principle or an action, how it relates to secondary causes and their subjects, how God bestows it, and whether second causes depend essentially on God alone or also on others. Disp. XXIII treats final cause in general—its reality, kinds, effects, the nature of final causality and its formal principle, which things can cause finally, whether cognition is required, whether the end moves as real or as known, and its place in divine and in natural/irrational actions. Disp. XXIV argues about the ultimate end: whether an ultimate final cause can be shown and whether it per se concurs with all proximate ends so that all agents intend it. Disp. XXV considers exemplar causality: whether there are exemplars, what and where they are, and whether exemplar is a proper causal kind or reducible to another. Disp. XXVI compares causes to effects regarding nobility and priority, the possibility of several causes for one effect, simultaneous total causes of one species, alternate total causes, and whether the same cause can bear multiple—especially contrary—effects. Disp. XXVII compares causes among themselves, asking which of the four is more perfect and whether causes can be mutually causative. Disp. XXVIII divides being into infinite and finite (and equivalent divisions), asking about adequacy and whether the division is univocal or analogical. Disp. XXIX considers God as First Being and uncreated substance, treating demonstrations of existence by physical/metaphysical reasoning, a posteriori via the unicity of the uncreated, and, in some way, a priori.