Francisco Suárez: biography of this Spanish philosopher

This was the life of Francisco Suarez, a Spanish philosopher very influential in the Renaissance.

Francisco Suarez was a Spanish philosopher, theologian and jurist considered the greatest exponent of the scholastic philosophy of the 16th century. A member of the Jesuits, he had the opportunity to study in several universities, traveling to all parts of Christendom and spreading his philosophy.

A staunch defender of the Catholic faith at a time when Protestantism had just emerged and threatened the religious monopoly of the Holy See in the Western world, Suarez carried out multiple works to spread the message in defense of the ancient faith.

In the following we will discover who this Spanish philosopher was and we will see some glimpses of his metaphysical, political and legal perspective, by means of a biography of Francisco Suárez.

Brief biography of Francisco Suárez

Francisco Suárez de Toledo Vázquez de Utiel y González de la Torre, Doctor Eximius or more briefly known as Francisco Suárez was born on January 5, 1548 in Granada, Spanish Empire; he grew up in the bosom of a wealthy family of Castilian origin who had recently taken possession as many other inhabitants of the Crown of Castile of the Andalusian lands. In his childhood Francisco Suárez learned Latin in his own home with Juan Latino as his teacher; in this language he would write his work.

As the years passed and he entered adolescence, Suarez entered as a novice in the Society of Jesus in Medina del Campo in Valladolid. Later, in 1561 he enrolled in the University of Salamanca, where he studied law. In 1564, after being rejected three times from the Society of Jesus, he was admitted as one of its members. After that, Between 1564 and 1566 he studied philosophy and for the next four years he focused on theology..

In 1571 he began his teaching activity in Segovia working as a professor of philosophy. In 1575 he was a theology intern in Segovia and Avila and the following year he settled in Valladolid to teach theology for four years. In 1580 he traveled to the center of Christendom itself, Rome. There he would be welcomed as a professor of theology at the Roman College for five years but, unfortunately and due to his poor health, he was forced to return to Spain.

In his return he would exercise his teaching at the University of Alcalá de Henares, a place where he would have tense and heated discussions with Father Grabriel Vázquez about juridical-moral and theological questions. As a professor, Francisco Suárez departed from the norm of the time. He refused the usual methods, considering them inadequate to awaken the interest of students. He posed new problems to his students and promoted the study of the sources he mentioned, inviting them to reflect and criticize them.

In 1590 he published his book "De verbo incarnato" and, two years later, "De mysteriis vitae Christi", in which he commented on some aspects of the "Summa" of St. Thomas. In 1593 he returned to the University of Salamanca as a teacher, during which time he prepared his "Disputationes Metaphysicae", which would be the pinnacle of his career and would be published in 1597 in Salamanca.

In 1597 he moved to the chair of theology at the University of Coimbra in Portugal. During the year 1599 he lived in Madrid after the closure of that university and published in that year "Opuscula theologica".. In it he expounded certain ideas that ended up being controversial, especially that of confession at a distance, which caused him to give explanations to Pope Clement VIII. This caused him to have to give explanations to Pope Clement VIII. However, Pope Paul V would favor him, coming out in defense of his innovative ideas.

In 1612 he published "De legibus" which would be another of his important works. A year later, in the middle of the polemic initiated by James I of England, Francisco Suarez published his "Defensio fidei catholicae apostolicae adversus Anglicanae sectae errores" (Defense of the catholic and apostolic faith against the errors of the Anglican sect), a work directly commissioned by the pope. In it Suarez sustained the theory of the indirect power of the pontiff in temporal matters, contradicting the idea that kings received their sovereignty by divine decision..

This work advocated that citizens were in their legitimate decision to protect themselves against a prince who became a tyrant, criticizing that if a ruler changed his faith and persecuted his people because of it, it was right that the people should respond. The text did not sit well in England, being publicly burned in London by order of James I and also in Paris in the hands of the Gallican royalists.

Two years after writing his "Defense of the Catholic Faith", he retired as a professor in Coimbra and spent his last years in Portugal. He died on September 25, 1617 at the age of 69 in the capital of Portugal.He was buried in the Church of San Roque. Throughout the XVII century some of his works appeared posthumously, which speak about man's freedom. The extraordinary scope of his thought was kept alive for almost two centuries in most European universities.

The philosophy of Francisco Suárez

Francisco Suarez is considered the last great thinker of the Renaissance scholastic school.He is considered the last great thinker of the Renaissance scholastic school, focusing mainly on metaphysics and legal and political philosophy. Knowing that scholasticism was becoming sterile, Suarez tried to broaden the philosophical horizon with new conceptions and perspectives, but without ceasing to think that philosophy should remain Christian and be at the service of theology.

It is considered that his work of the "Disputations metaphysiques" draws the border between the commentaries on Aristotle and the independent studies on metaphysics. It is this work that is considered to constitute a true encyclopedia of his philosophical and religious knowledge. Because he he tried to reconcile divine grace with free will, some see in the figure of Francisco Suarez a sort of "second Aquinas". there are those who see in the figure of Francisco Suárez a kind of "second Aquinas".

Metaphysics

The importance of the figure of Suarez is that he was the first to erect a systematic metaphysical body at a time when the philosophers of his time seemed to want something more than a series of Aristotelian commentaries. With the work of Francisco Suárez metaphysics became epistemologically an autonomous entity, a field of knowledge with a certain theoretical independence..

His book "Disputaciones Metafísicas" is the work that gathers all his philosophy in an exhaustive way. Although Suárez is considered the last great systematizer of scholastic thought, he is, in turn, a precursor of orientations and themes that would acquire great importance in the modern philosophical thought of the 17th century.

More than 200 authors are cited in this work, making direct reference to their works. It analyzes and discusses all kinds of philosophical theories, always from a respectful point of view.. He talks about Saint Thomas Aquinas, Plato, the Arab philosophy, the Thomists, the Scotists, the philosophers of the Renaissance, the masters of Salamanca... practically no man of wide philosophical knowledge prior to his time is omitted in Suárez's work although, of course, all of them belonged to the West or to nearby cultures.

Having knowledge of all kinds of theories, and above all of those that had been defined within scholasticism (Thomism, Scotism and Ockhamist nominalism) Suárez compiles and, in part, modernizes the philosophy of his time.

Politics and Law

Francisco Suárez expresses his juridical-political thought in various works, especially "De legibus" (1612) and "Defensio fidei catholicae" (1613).. Broadly speaking, he is based on the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas, but even so, the depth with which he expounds his thoughts gives him a great deal of originality.

Suarez starts from the same definition of St. Thomas when speaking of law, but he sees it as excessively broad. For him, the law should be restricted to the human sphere, speaking on the one hand of eternal law, of divine reason, and natural law, which would be universal and human.. Suarez conceives law as an aspect that must be both a product of the understanding and of the will. It must be a common, just and stable precept, which has consensus. The law must dictate what is just and for a law to be just it must fulfill the following three conditions:

• That it be enacted for the common good
• That it be enacted among all those over whom the legislator has authority.
• That it distributes burdens equitably.

In addition, explains ideas about the society in which the law should apply. The first social form is the family, which he considers to be an imperfect grouping from which one passes to the formation of a society by means of an express, voluntary and general pact that seeks the common good. But for the law to be properly established it is necessary that a community of authorities and subjects be established, therefore it is necessary that institutions be created to house authority, understanding that they will never receive power directly from God.

The delegation of political power will not mean the renunciation by the people of their primordial rights and, in fact, the rulers will not be able to act against the people under any circumstances. If the prince, king or any authority turns against his subjects, the people have the right to stop him, since the ruler is so not because God has chosen him, but because the people have allowed it. This idea has been interpreted as a subtle criticism of the absolutist monarchies in force in his time.

Bibliographical references:

• Ferrater Mora, J. (1953). Suárez and modern philosophy. Journal of the History of Ideas, 14(4), pp. 528 - 547.
• Rábade Romeo, S. (1997). Francisco Suarez : (1548-1617) ([1st. ed.] ed.). Madrid: Ediciones del Orto.
• Bergadá, M. M. (1950). The contribution of Francisco Suarez to modern philosophy. (pp. 1921-1926). Buenos Aires: Universidad Nacional de Cuyo.