## 1. Life and Works



Francisco Suarez was born in Granada on 5 January 1548, the son
of Gaspar Suarez de Toledo and Antonia Vazquez de Utiel.
He made a famously slow start. Thus, for example, his application to
join the Society of Jesus at the age of sixteen was the only one of
fifty to be rejected: his health was weak and his intellect seemed
unpromising. After appeal, he was finally admitted to the novitiate,
but only as a lowly ranked *indiferente*--someone whose
permanent rank within the Society would be determined at a later date.
Even after being admitted, it took some time--and some
praying--before Suarez's talent for philosophy and
theology began to emerge. Eventually, however, they emerged as fully
and undeniably apparent, and he rose to a position of great
professional and academic
 prominence.[2]



Suarez's intellectual landscape was marked by the revival of
Iberian scholasticism, triggered in part by Francisco de Vitoria. His
works should therefore, in the first instance, be read as
contributions to this far-reaching theological and philosophical
movement and research program. The revival was very widespread,
engaging dozens, if not hundreds, of theologians, not only across
Europe and in the centers of learning and universities of Iberian
America (such as Lima, Quito, and Mexico), but as distant from the
Iberian peninsula as Japan, China, the Philippines, India and
Ethiopia. In all these lands philosophically minded missionaries,
mainly Jesuits, promulgated his
 works.[3]
 Consider as an illustration that the Jesuit missionary Martino
Martini, based at Hangzhou, even attempted a Chinese translation of
Suarez's great masterpiece, the *Metaphysical
Disputations*, in the mid-seventeenth
 century.[4]



Suarez was thoroughly educated within the framework of this
revival, receiving two years of philosophy and four of theology,
before he himself started teaching at the Jesuit School in Segovia.
This first appointment was followed by positions at Avila, Valladolid,
Alcala, Salamanca, the Jesuit School at Rome (the Collegio
Romano), and, for almost twenty years, at Coimbra, in Portugal. While
an unsuccessful preacher (his few attempts failed because of his
tendency to digress into the abstruse points of doctrine, the
subtleties of which tended to be lost on his auditors), Suarez
proved to be a dedicated and original teacher, if not always a popular
one. His method departed from the norm: instead of merely repeating
the opinions of others, he believed in taking a fresh look at the
issue under consideration, examining, as he used to say, the very root
of the problem (Scorraille 2005: I, 156).



Like many of his fellow Jesuits, Suarez was frequently accused
of straying too far and too often from views attributed to Thomas
Aquinas. During Suarez's own lifetime and shortly after,
allusions to a "Suarista" party (here in opposition to the
Thomists) became popular. Suarez himself resisted these
distinctions as false and as resting on fabricated oppositions. He
denied being any sort of "inventor of a new school" or as
"in opposition to or creating a faction against anybody"
(Scorraille 2005: I, 310). He also faced opposition within his own
order, in particular, from the other great theologian of his time,
Gabriel Vazquez--an opposition which developed into a
life-long rivalry and a partisanship which survived their deaths.



Beyond authoring works of highly abstract metaphysics and
philosophical theology, Suarez wrote a number of polemical
tracts motivated by the political upheavals of his day. In *De
immunitate ecclesiastica*, written in 1606, he defended
ecclesiastical rights against alleged encroachments by the Republic of
Venice. In *Defensio fidei*, published in 1613 at the behest of
the papal nuncio in Madrid, Decio Caraffa, he offered a response to
James I of England's defence of his requirement that Catholic subjects
take an oath of fidelity. This work went beyond its original purpose,
to the point where it provided something close to a full-fledged
theory of political power. Seen as undermining the foundations of
regal absolute rule, it was publicly burned, not only in London at the
end of 1613, but also the following year in the courtyard of the
Parliament in Paris.



These unhappy events, though, came towards the end of Suarez's
life, the last two decades of which were spent in the more peaceful
surroundings of Coimbra, then an intellectual hub of the
revitalization of scholastic philosophy. Philip II of Spain (Philip I
of Portugal), who imposed his rule on the whole of the Iberian
peninsula in 1580, sought to appoint a distinguished theologian to the
most eminent university of this new part of the realm. After initially
accepting Suarez's personally tendered apologies, given on
grounds of ill-health, Philip reconsidered and then insisted in a
second letter that Suarez take up a post in Coimbra. Clearly,
Suarez could not decline. Travels apart, Suarez would
remain in Coimbra until shortly before his death on 25 September 1617,
aged almost seventy, after convalescing for two weeks in Lisbon from
what may have been dysentery.



During his working life, Suarez was both remarkably prolific
and industrious (according to Fichter 1940: 327, he wrote about 21
million words, more than twice the output of Thomas Aquinas), not only
writing but equally involving himself in all manner of editorial
matters. Given his eminence and popularity, almost as soon as
Suarez published a book, unauthorized copies were printed in
places such as Paris, Vienna, Cologne, Geneva, Lyons, and Mainz.



Twenty-two volumes of Suarez's works were published, nine of
them posthumously under the care of his friend Baltasar Alvarez.
Within this corpus most of the philosophical interest has gone to the
monumental *Disputationes metaphysicae* (*Metaphysical
Disputations*, 1597), a work in which Suarez collects and
thoughtfully assesses the views of numerous authors, on a vast array
of problems, before offering his own solutions; *De legibus*
(1612), where he outlines his natural law theory; and *De
anima* (1621), where he offers a critical exposition of
Aristotelian approaches to life and cognition.



A number of writings have been lost, including his commentaries on
Aristotle, which Suarez had used for his classroom
presentations during his first tenure at Salamanca. His oeuvre has
been collected, most recently in the 28 volumes (including indexes),
and published in Paris between 1856 and 1878 (*Opera omnia*).
We also have a collection of *responsa* (*Conselhos e
Pareceres*).


## 2. The *Metaphysical Disputations*



It is scarcely credible that there is no complete English translation
of Suarez's great masterpiece of metaphysics, the *Metaphysical
 Disputations*[5]--though,
 happily, we do possess a translation into
 Spanish.[6]
 It is a work of surpassing sophistication and comprehensiveness,
serving at once as a kind of authoritative epitome of ancient
 and[7]
 medieval metaphysics and as a free-standing, incisive, and original
discussion of all topics pertaining to metaphysics, conceived,
according to Suarez's understanding of this subject, as the
study of being. As Schopenhauer remarked, the work is "an
authentic compendium of the whole scholastic tradition".
Extending to fifty-four disputations, each in its own right
effectively a dedicated monograph on a discrete topic, the work
contains 7,709 references, citing some 245 authors, led in typical
scholastic fashion by Aristotle, who receives 1,735 references,
followed by Thomas Aquinas, with whose philosophy Suarez
retains an animating sympathy, who receives 1,008 (Iturrioz 1949).
Still, Suarez is hardly beholden to Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas,
or any other thinker: he is, as his *Metaphysical Disputations*
makes manifest, a thinker of fearless originality and innovation.



As shown in this work, Suarez has a conception of metaphysics
which initially seems much more narrowly focused than that subject as
it is conceived today. Still, even given this narrower concentration,
metaphysics as practiced by Suarez opens itself into many of
the topics commanding the attention of current day metaphysicians. His
avowedly narrow focus results from his taking metaphysics to have but
one, exclusive object: "the study of being insofar as it is real
being" (*DM* I
 1.26).[8]
 In this sense, Suarez understands metaphysics in a broadly
Aristotelian manner as the study of being and its causes. This study
was rechristened in the seventeenth century as
 "ontology",[9]
 literally, the study of *to on*, or being, in view of the then
broadening sweep of metaphysics whereby it came to include the
investigation of minds and bodies, causation, numbers, identity and
other relations, properties and propositions, modality, and,
eventually, the nature of abstract entities, including fictional ones.
Relative to this broader conception, ontology, as the study of being,
seems highly specific. Still, this appearance is misleading,
especially where Suarez is concerned, since he addresses most
of the topics on this list in one way or another, if in an idiom alien
to those unschooled in Aristotelianism. For, as it turns out, he
understands "the study of being" and its causes very
broadly indeed.



This is partly because he looks at being as a subject matter requiring
consideration of the categories; of terms or properties which
transcend the categories; of infinite and finite beings; and
even--as indispensable but falling outside the remit of the
metaphysician proper--the study of beings of reason (*entia
rationis*), that is, beings which do not in fact exist, such as
fictitious entities, privations, and various forms of abstraction, all
of which, Suarez insists, force themselves into view, despite
their non-existence.



Altogether, then, Suarez's *Metaphysical Disputations*
comprises fifty-four questions, or topics for discussion, constituting
seven unequal sections, ordered first under a general division of
being in general (*DM* I-XXVII) and then being as divided
into infinite and finite being (*DM*
 XXVIII-LIII):[10]


1. The nature of metaphysics (*DM* I)
2. The transcendentals (*DM* II-XI)
3. The causes of being (*DM* XII-XXVII)
4. Finite and infinite being (*DM* XXVIII-XXXI)
5. Substance and accident, pertaining to finite beings (*DM*
XXXII-XXXVIII)
6. The nine categories of accident (*DM*
XXXIX-LIII)
7. Real and conceptual being (*DM* LIV)



The first and last of these, which in different ways stand outside of
the subject matter proper of the *Metaphysical Disputations*,
we have already characterized briefly.



The second topic (*DM* II-XI) treats transcendental
terms, including being (*ens*), but also good (*bonum*)
and true (*veritas*), which are transcendental in the sense
that they may be predicated of beings in any category (a quality is a
being, an *ens*, just as a substance is an *ens*, and so
on for every category of being). Every being is, as such, according to
Suarez, one; hence *being one* is predicated across the
full range of categories as well. So, too, but less obviously and more
controversially, according to Suarez, every single being is
something true, in some suitably ontological sense of *true*
(as in "true propositions are simply facts") and also
something good. So, these terms require dedicated treatment at the
hands of the metaphysician.



The remaining sections of the *Metaphysical Disputations* are
centrally and recognizably discussions of kinds of being: infinite
being, that is, God; finite being, what is created by God; and then
the nature and features of finite beings, again as delineated by a
theory of categories: substance and accident, and then all of the
kinds of accident there may be. We will restrict ourselves mainly to
(3), the causes of being, since doing so provides a clear picture of
the character of Suarez's inquiry in the *Metaphysical
Disputations*. 



Before doing so, however, because of its relative obscurity and
inaccessibility to present-day readers, it will be helpful to offer a
complete outline of the fifty-four disputations.


1. The nature of metaphysics (*DM* I)
2. Being as such (*DM* II)
	1. The transcendentals (*DM* III-XI)
		1. The attributes of being in general (*DM* III)
		2. Unity (*DM* IV-VII)
			1. Transcendental unity in general (*DM* IV)
			2. Individual unity and individuation (*DM* V)
			3. Universals and unity (*DM* VI)
			4. Distinguishing various kinds of unity (*DM* VII)
		3. Truth (*DM* VIII-IX)
			1. Truth as an attribute of being (*DM* VIII)
			2. Falsity (*DM* IX)
		4. Goodness (*DM* X-XI)
			1. Transcendental goodness (*DM* X)
			2. Evil (*DM* XI)
	2. The causes of being (*DM* XII-XXVII)
		1. The causes of being in general (*DM* XII)
		2. The material cause (*DM* XIII-XIV)
			1. The material cause of substance (*DM* XIII)
			2. The material cause of accidents (*DM* XIV)
		3. The formal cause (*DM* XV-XVI)
			1. The formal cause of substance (*DM* XV)
			2. The formal cause of accident (*DM* XVI)
		4. The efficient cause (*DM* XVII-XXII)
			1. The efficient cause in general (*DM* XVII)
			2. The requisites of causality (*DM* XVIII)
			3. Necessary and contingent causes (*DM* XIX)
			4. The first cause (*DM* XX-XXII)
				1. Creation: the first action of the first cause (*DM*
				XX)
				2. Conservation: the second action of the first cause (*DM*
				XXI)
				3. Concurrence: the third action of the first cause (*DM*
				XXII)
		5. The final cause (*DM* XXIII-XXIV)
			1. The final cause in general (*DM* XXIII)
			2. The ultimate final cause (*DM* XXIV)
		6. The exemplar cause (*DM* XXV)
		7. Properties common to all causes (*DM* XXVI-XXVII)
			1. The relation of causes to their effects (*DM* XXVI)
			2. The relation of causes to one another (*DM* XXVII)
3. Being, infinite and finite (*DM* XXVIII-LIII)
	1. The distinction between finite and infinite being (*DM*
	XXVIII)
	2. Infinite being (*DM* XXIX-XXX)
		1. The existence of the first being, as known by natural reason
		(*DM* XXIX)
		2. The nature of the first being, as known by natural reason
		(*DM* XXX)
	3. Finite being (*DM* XXXI-LIII)
		1. The essence and individuation of finite beings (*DM*
		XXXI)
		2. The distinction between substance and accident (*DM*
		XXXII)
		3. Created substance (*DM* XXXIII-XXXVI)
			1. Created substance in general (*DM* XXXIII)
			2. Primary substance (the *suppositum*) (*DM*
			XXXIV)
			3. Immaterial substance (*DM* XXXV)
			4. Material substance (*DM* XXXVI)
		4. Accidents in general (*DM* XXXVII-XXXVIII)
			1. The nature of accidents (*DM* XXXVII)
			2. The relation of accident to substance (*DM* XXXVIII)
		5. The nine categories of accident (*DM* XXXIX-LIV)
			1. The nine highest genera (*DM* XXXIX)
			2. Quantity (*DM* XL-XLII)
				1. Continuous quantity (*DM* XL)
				2. Discrete quantity (*DM* XLI)
			3. Quality (*DM* XLII-XLVI)
				1. Quality in general (*DM* XLII)
				2. Potentiality and actuality (*DM* XLIII)
				3. Habits (*DM* XLIV)
				4. Contrariety among qualities (*DM* XLV)
				5. Intensity of quality (*DM* XLVI)
			4. Relation (*DM* XLVII)
			5. Action (*DM* XLVIII)
			6. Passion (*DM* XLIX)
			7. Time (*DM* L)
			8. Place (*DM* LI)
			9. Position (*DM* LII)
			10. Having (*DM* LIII)
4. Beings of reason (*entia rationis*) (*DM* LIV)



As is clear from this list of topics, the *Metaphysical
Disputations* covers a great deal of territory. In fact, again, if
in a different idiom, Suarez traverses virtually all of the
topics of concern to metaphysicians practicing in the periods which
followed him, down even to the present day.


### 2.1 Suarez's Nominalism



Suarez conducts his metaphysical inquiries against the backdrop
of a pervasive commitment to nominalism, according to which only
individuals exist: all extra-mental entities are singular and
individual (*DM* VI 1.2; cf. *DM* V passim). Since
whatever is singular and individual is not common, it follows, in
Suarez's preferred idiom, that 'formal unity, as it
exists in a thing, is incommunicable' (*DM* VI 1.11).
This is to say, then, that nothing extra-mental is fully shared by
more than one being; hence, there are no universals, where these are
conceived as mind- and language-independent entities capable of being
wholly present in more than one place at one time.



Those approaching Suarez's works for the first time,
however, are confronted with not a few passages in which he seems to
assert exactly the opposite. For instance:



> 
> 
> Things which are denominated universals truly exist in reality (res
> quae universales denominatur vere in re existunt). First it must be
> established that those things we denominate universal and common are
> real and exist in things themselves; for we do not fabricate them
> mentally, but rather apprehend them and understand them to be in
> things, and we produce definitions, construct demonstrations, and we
> seek knowledge of them thus conceived (*DM* VI 2.1).
> 
> 
> 



So, some work is required to come to terms with his approach to this
issue. The effort required is, however, productive, since once one
appreciates Suarez's nominalism, many otherwise obscure
remarks he makes become immediately intelligible.



In order to come to terms with Suarez's position, the
first point to appreciate is that a nominalist of his day faced an
immediate, inescapable problem. It is, in fact, the very problem
mentioned by Suarez in the passage cited: Aristotelian science
presupposes a conception of the organization of knowledge according to
which a science must proceed via demonstrations, that is, deductions,
or logically valid syllogisms, the premises of which are necessary,
better known than their conclusions, and universal in scope
(cf. Aristotle, *APo.* 71b16-25, 77b5-73a6; *Met.*
981a5-30, 1006a6-18, 1039b27-1040a7). If the premises are universal in
scope, however, then that is presumably due to their featuring
universals as terms. This is why, in part, Suarez is
inclined to take the claims of realism about universals
seriously. Like others of his time, he embraces an Aristotelian theory
of demonstration and so must confront its evident commitment to
realism.



The easy way to address this commitment, of course, would simply be to
embrace realism about universals. Suarez does not take the easy
route. Instead, when he considers an argument for the existence of
universals conceived as mind- and language-independent entities (in,
for instance *DM* VI 1.4), he offers in response the
'true and contrary opinion' (*DM* VI 1.8-12).
This is that in all real things, there is a formal unity per se,
belonging to each essence or nature (*DM* VI 1.8). As a result,
every individual is not only one in number but one essentially. Formal
unity is distinguished from singular unity by reason (*per
rationem*) (*DM* VI 1.9). An individual unity does not
belong to some common essence just by itself; something must be added,
namely formal unity. That is to say, then, nothing is a ph, a human
being say, merely in virtue of its being one thing; that one thing
must have in addition some definite formal character, namely
being-ph. The claim that something is a unity tells us nothing
determinate about an individual beyond that it is some one thing or
other. By contrast, formal unity takes us directly to an essence,
without any addition, even by reason. This is what Suarez means
when he says that formal unity and singular unity are not one and the
same. Even so, this difference is not given by the extra-mental
individual (*ex parte rei*), but by reason alone (*sed
ratione tantum*) (*DM* VI 1.10)



The common essence and the singular entity are distinguished, then,
not on the basis of the nature of the thing (*ex natura rei*),
but by reason; hence, again, there is no world-given distinction
between something's existing as an individual and its existing
as this or that kind of individual: reason makes this distinction.
This permits Suarez to insist that formal unity, as it exists
in a thing, is incommunicable (*unitas formalis prout in re
existit, incommunicabilis est*) (*DM* VI 1.11). The formal
unity marches in step with the nature of a thing, and in real things
there is no common nature; instead, 'nature and essence are
multiplied as many times as there are individuals' (*DM*
VI 1. 12). So, while formal unity at the individual level is mind- and
language-independent, formal unity as common is not: it is supplied by
the operations of the mind.



So, why does he say, then, that 'things which are denominated
universals truly exist in reality (*res quae universales
denominatur vere in re existunt*; *DM* VI 2.1)? The crucial
and characteristically subtle coloration comes from the word
'denominated' (*denominatur*). Suarez is
thinking, in fact, that things called 'universals' really
do exist--but what they turn out to be are extrinsic
denominations, that is, in this case, features of individuals brought
forth by the workings of the mind. He says, for instance:



> 
> 
> Universals in reality are not separate from singulars. Secondly, it
> must be supposed that these things or natures which we denominate
> universals, are not really separated from singular things, since, as
> has been demonstrated above, every thing which exists is necessarily
> singular and individual ... (*DM* VI. 2. 2).
> 
> 
> 



His position, then, is that only individuals exist, but that a
collection of individual ph-things can be--and indeed are in
scientific demonstrations--regarded as having a common nature,
being-ph. This is just to say, for example, that the universal
predicate '... is a human' is applied equally and
rightly to Peter and Paula by a discerning mind; but that is not to
say that there is a universal in which they equally partake.



That this common predication is 'rightly' made derives
from the fact, according to Suarez, that there is an objective
similarity obtaining between Peter and Paula--this similarity is
not imposed by the mind, but is rather reflected in the mental
apprehension ascribing a common predicate to them. This permits him to
say, then:



> 
> 
> And it follows from these considerations, first, that although some
> individuals may be, *a parte rei*, formally one apart from the
> thinking of the mind, nevertheless several individuals which are said
> to be of the same nature are not one thing with the true unity which
> is in the things, but only either by way of being grounded or through
> the intellect ... It follows, secondly, that it is one thing to
> speak of formal unity and another thing to speak of the community of
> this unity, for unity is in things, as has been insisted; community,
> however, properly and strictly is not in things, for no unity which
> exists in things is common, as we have shown, but there is in singular
> things a certain similarity in their formal unities in which their
> community is grounded, which community the intellect is able attribute
> to such a nature, as conceived by it, which similarity is not properly
> unity, since it does not represent the undividedness of the entities
> on which it is based but only their congruence or their relation or
> their co-existence with one another (*DM* VI 1.12).
> 
> 
> 



His view is, then, nominalistic. Since, however, the word
'nominalist' is used in different ways by different
philosophers, and is, indeed, used rather austerely by some of the
philosophers with whom Suarez was acquainted, we should specify
precisely his variety of nominalism, in a single sentence: a universal
is a being of reason (an *ens rationis*), properly regarded as
an extrinsic denomination grounded in the intrinsic individual formal
unities of mind- and language-independent things (*res*), as
mediated by non-formally representing intelligible species related to
their objects predicatively by some manner of analogy of attribution.
That the representations are non-formal is, in this context, just to
say that they represent their objects not as universals, but as
individuals regarded as being the same, which manner of regarding them
is grounded in a real fact about them, namely that they are
objectively similar.[11]




One may wish to question whether Suarez's position is
defensible. What is required for understanding his conception of
metaphysics, however, is recognizing that this is his position. For
better or worse, Suarez is a nominalist, in the sense
specified. His investigation of the causes of being respects this
constraint throughout.


### 2.2 The Causes of Being



Suarez devotes a great deal of energy to an investigation of
topics pertaining to causation, broadly construed. This is because he
is interested in the first instance, as a metaphysician, in an
investigation into the causes of being (*DM* XII-XXVII),
an approach to metaphysics colored by the writings of Aristotle, the
broad idiom of which Suarez, in common with other scholastics,
embraces. More specifically, first, in keeping with the Aristotelian
conception of science (*scientia*), Suarez supposes that
to understand anything we must grasp and understand the causes of that
thing; so, as a special case, to understand being (*ens*) we
must investigate and understand the causes of being, taken in its most
general and abstract aspect. Second, as he conceives it, causal
inquiry proceeds within the context of an Aristotelian four-causal
framework of explanatory adequacy: material, formal, efficient, and
final. Suarez supposes, however, that to execute his study of
the causes of being, it is first of all incumbent on him to understand
precisely what it is for something to *be* a cause, but then
also further, as a distinct matter, what it is for a cause to
*exercise* its causality.



As Suarez approaches these issues, the question of
*what* a cause is differs crucially from the question of
*how* a cause actively brings about its effects--two
questions which were often run together in later periods of
philosophy. According to Suarez, one might truly say, for
instance, that a doctor is a cause of health, without yet
understanding the precise activity of the doctor in virtue of which he
is a cause, how it is that his activity on a specific occasion
qualifies as an instance of healing--how, that is, the cause
exercises its causality (*DM* XII 2.13). To have a full
understanding of the science of medicine, then, one must understand
the causes of health and, further, how those causes exercise their
causality, that is, how those causes manage to have the effects they
have. So too, then, with the causes of being. To understand being, we
must understand what brings being about, in the broadest possible
sense--what is responsible for being (*ens*). Thereafter,
we must come to terms with what causes individual beings
(*entia*) to come into existence, or to change their manner of
existence once they have come into existence. This involves reflection
on all the causes of being, however many and of whatever kinds they
may be. It further involves reflection on the narrower question of how
the causes of being exercise their causality--how precisely, that
is, such causes come to be responsible for being. This, then,
licenses, or indeed requires, Suarez to engage in a thorough
examination of causation itself.



The fifteen disputations in which Suarez explores these matters
(*DM* XII-XXVII) consequently contain extended, intricate
discussions of each of the four causes, as well as detailed
explorations of how each cause effects its causality on a specific
occasion. In general, he urges, a cause is a sort of origin or source
(a *principium*). But what sort of source or origin? Not every
source or origin qualifies as a cause (a journey from Athens to
Jerusalem begins in Athens, but Athens is not the cause of this
journey). Suarez notes that certain of his contemporaries
sought to characterize the relevant sort of principle simply as that
on which other things depend as such (*DM* XII 2.4: *causa
est id a quo aliquid per se
 pendet*);[12]
 but he sets aside this formulation in favor of one which, if
initially odder sounding, is more contentful and characteristic of the
idiom within which he works. He thinks that a cause is the sort of
principle that "in its own right imparts being to something
else" (*causa est principium per se influens esse in
aliud*: *DM* XII 2.4). One reason his approach sounds odd
is that talk of one thing's "imparting being", or perhaps
even of one thing's "flowing being into" (*influens
esse*) another thing, is initially hard to fathom. This fact does
not escape Suarez, however. Indeed, he calls attention to this
very word "flowing" (*influens*) and glosses it
simply as "giving" or "communicating" being to
another thing (*dandi vel communicandi esse alteri*). So at the
most general level, a cause is the sort of principle or source which
can impart being to another being--that is to say, then, that a
cause is something that makes something exist or makes something
already existing come to exist in a new and different way.



Of course, this generic formulation by itself tells us very little,
but that too is by design. On the overarching approach favored by
Suarez, causation is initially very broadly characterized: a
cause, taken most generically, is responsible for the existence or
features of some being beyond itself; and an exercise of causality is
precisely the activity by which a cause imparts existence to another,
by creating it, or altering its features once it exists. As he moves
through each of the four ways one thing might be responsible for the
existence or features of another, Suarez brings content and
specificity to his first generic notion, by explicating the various
ways each of four causes manages to impart being to some being beyond
itself.



In fact, this general approach to causation encourages Suarez
to treat the subject so broadly that, for instance, he devotes an
entire disputation (*DM* XIX, of some 39,000 words), one of the
six disputations given over to efficient causation (*DM*
XVII-XXII), to the topics of necessity and contingency, fate and
luck, freedom of the will, and issues pertaining to God's freedom in
creation. He even indulges in this disputation on efficient causation
in a discussion of the question of whether there could be contingency
in the world if--(in his view) contrary to modal fact--God
were necessitated to create the world as it is. This discussion offers
a good example of the richly metaphysical character of Suarez's
general philosophical outlook: he very often engages not only in
counterfactual reasoning, but in counterfactual reasoning featuring
counterfactuals with impossible antecedents. Such reasoning permits
him to make fine-grained, highly intensional discriminations that
would otherwise be inaccessible to him. Thus, with respect to the
current illustration, he concludes that there could indeed be
contingency in the world if it were the case that God, *per
impossibile*, was necessitated to create the world just as we find
it. This finding, whether or not ultimately defensible, then permits
him to make further, finer-grained distinctions among different types
of contingency, and so also among different types of modality:
physical, nomic, and logical.



When focusing on the nature of the individual causes seriatim,
Suarez begins by dividing the four causes into the
*internal* and *external* (or intrinsic and extrinsic;
*DM* XII 3.19). Formal and material causes are internal,
whereas efficient and final causes are external. A thing's matter
accounts for the material features of the thing which it constitutes,
without actually *being* that thing; and the same again for the
form. So, for example, a statue is malleable because it is made of
bronze, though that quantity of bronze in virtue of which it is
malleable is not identical with the statue, since it may exist when
the statue does not; and the bronze statue is a statue of Hermes
because of its form, which, like its matter, can be readily thought of
as a constituent of the statue without being identified with the
statue, which is itself neither exhaustively matter nor form, but a
composite of both. In Suarez's terms, then, matter and form
conform to the general definition of a cause, because each in its own
way infuses something beyond itself--the statue--with its
existence and features. Each manages to give some manner of being
(*esse*) to the statue, even they are in different ways
internal to the entity whose being they influence. By contrast,
neither of the statue's external causes--the efficient cause,
that is, the sculptor who sculpts the bronze so as to give it this or
that form, and its final cause, that is, the goal or reason the
sculptor has in view when sculpting--is a constituent of the
statue. They are thus external causes in Suarez's terminology.




Within this overarching framework, Suarez proceeds to
investigate each of the four causes minutely. One immediately
appreciates when studying his treatment of these issues a level of
detail and sophistication plainly lacking in many of the accounts of
causation written in the several centuries after his death. It is
difficult to believe, for example, that Hume's modest and cursory
suggestion, in *An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding*,
that a cause is "an object, followed by another, and where all
the objects similar to the first, are followed by objects similar to
the second" (Hume 1993 [1748], II.7) is an advance in nuance or
sophistication over Suarez's the protracted discussions of the
*Metaphysical Disputations*.



However that may be, one is confronted in this work with a discussion
which is by any measure rich, intricate, and comprehensive. Each of
the four causes receives it own extended treatment in the sections of
the *Metaphysical Disputations* dedicated to the causes of
being (*DM* XII-XXVII). To come to see the character of
these discussions, we may reflect especially on Suarez's presentation
of two of the four causes in particular, one internal and one
external. His treatments of formal and final causes are in any case of
special note, since each in its own way represents a departure and
development from the very Aristotelian tradition which forms the basic
foundation for Suarez's metaphysics.


### 2.3 Formal Causation and the Existence of Substantial Forms



Suarez's treatment of formal causation provides a good example.
He begins his treatment of the formal cause in his typical fashion, by
showing it conforms to his overarching causal framework. A standard
textbook account of formal causation familiar to Suarez holds
simply that "form in an internal cause that gives being to a
thing" (*causa intrinseca quae dat esse rei*: *DM*
XII 3.3). This approach certainly comports with his basic framework
for causation, at least in general terms. Suarez is, however,
unwilling to adopt this formula unqualifiedly, since he thinks the
other internal cause, matter, has a causal efficacy of its own, not
parasitic on the causality of form. Thus, when he comes to give an
account of the most significant kind of formal cause, the substantial
form, he offers the following definition:



> 
> 
> *x* is a substantial form =df *x* is a definite
> simple and incomplete substance, which, as the actuality of matter,
> constitutes with it the essence of composite substance (*forma est
> substantia quaedam simplex et incompleta, quae ut actus materiae cum
> ea constituit essentiam substantiae compositae*: *DM* XV
> 5.1)
> 
> 
> 



Suarez here insists that it is the form together *with the
matter* (*cum ea*) which constitutes the essence of a
substantial composite. He thinks, then, that matter has, so to speak,
its own independent causal pathway as an internal cause. Even though
the substantial form is the actuality of the matter, this does not
deprive matter of its causal efficacy. In this respect, he parts
company from a good many of his contemporaries and predecessors, who
had opted for the simpler formulation, often by representing the
causal efficacy of matter as somehow parasitic on the causality of the
form.



If this shows some development by acknowledging the independent role
of matter in causation and explanation, it is also likely to appear
retrograde in its basic appeal to the apparatus of formal causation.
Indeed, in *Metaphysical Disputations* XV Suarez takes
up in detail a question about substantial forms which has a special
resonance because of the contumely poured on this doctrine by
philosophers writing in the centuries after his death, many of whom
were self-consciously concerned to distance themselves from the entire
idea of formal causation--a doctrine they regarded as noxious,
obscurantist, and explanatorily vacuous. Locke, for instance, in his
*Essay Concerning Human Understanding*, derided his
predecessors for their "fruitless Enquiries after substantial
Forms, wholly unintelligible, and whereof we have scarce so much as
any obscure, or confused Conception in general." (Locke 1976
[1690]:
 3.6.10)[13]




Locke's reaction was in many ways typical of the general tenor of
post-scholastic rejections of substantial form in that he founded his
charges of unintelligibility largely on epistemic considerations: the
fruitlessness of substantial forms, he thinks, is shown most readily
by their empirical inadequacy. We have, he complains, no experience of
them at all, and therefore, no idea of what we might be taking
ourselves to be positing. This is in part because Locke conflates the
notion of substance with that of *substratum*, which he derides
as a something "I know not what, [introduced] to support those
ideas we call accidents" (Locke 1976 [1690]: 2.23.15).



It is striking that Suarez, a staunch defender of substantial
forms, in a way agrees the Locke's dominant complaint. At any rate, he
thinks that we might have only two reasons for accepting substantial
forms:



> 
> 
> The first reason for doubting that substantial forms exist is that
> they cannot be known by any experience (*ratio dubitandi est primo
> quia formae substantiales nullo experimento cognosci possunt*);
> nor are they necessary [to account for] the actions and differences in
> things which we do experience. Therefore, lacking any [sufficient]
> reason, they are not to be introduced (*DM* XV 1.1).
> 
> 
> 



There are two distinct succinctly stated arguments here. First, if we
can have no experience of substantial forms, we have reason for
doubting their existence. Second, if we have no need to posit them to
explain the phenomena we do experience, then, again, we have reason to
doubt their existence. These arguments are clearly connected, though
discrete, in that the second becomes dialectically salient precisely
when the first is endorsed. If one grants that we have reason to doubt
the existence of substantial forms insofar as we never experience them
directly, the question immediately arises as to whether we have some
indirect, non-experiential reason for granting them. The proponent of
the second argument contends that we do not.



What is striking is that Suarez simply grants the first premise
of the first argument, and so effectively cedes the point on which
Locke later laid so much emphasis: we have no direct experience of
substantial forms. Hence, he agrees, we have some reason for doubting
their existence. Needless to say, however, Suarez does not join
Locke or any of the many philosophers who followed him in finally
casting substantial forms aside. This is because he roundly rejects
the first premise of the second argument, according to which it is not
necessary to posit substantial forms to explain other data known to us
through experience. Suarez counters that, on the contrary,
substantial forms have significant explanatory work to do. He
concludes, then, that to the extent that this is so, we have reason to
countenance their existence after all.



His argument for the existence of substantial forms is thus
effectively abductive: for some range of data or phenomena,
Suarez contends, some explanation is required, and the only,
or, more weakly, the best, explanation of these phenomena involves a
commitment to substantial forms. So, his general argument schema is
clear: (i) some phenomenon ph requires explanation; (ii) the only
or best explanation of ph is the existence of substantial forms;
hence, (iii) there are substantial forms. The argument thus assumes
that the phenomena in question both obtain and are not primitive, that
is, that we are confronted with some data for which some form of
explanation is both wanting and available.



What are these phenomena? In *Metaphysical Disputations* XV,
Suarez appeals most forcefully to the following four: first, we
find accidents unified in a single subject (*DM* XV 1.7);
second, as a related matter, we observe various properties in a single
subject, both essential and accidental, standing in superordination
and subordination relations to one another (*DM* XV 1.14);
third, we experience various entities coming into and going out of
existence, suffering, in his preferred idiom, generation and
corruption (*DM* XV 1.7); and finally, we observe various
physical systems, including especially (but not only) living beings
manifesting equilibrium states which they maintain unless put under
pressure, and to which they return when a pressure applied has been
relieved (*DM* XV 1.8).



The arguments for these claims are varied, but in each case show great
sensitivity to matters of systematicity and unity. To explicate the
first, by way of illustration, Suarez appeals to the simple
thought that there are privileged unities in our world. He thinks it
plain--and does not dally to offer an argument--that, for
instance, Socrates is a unified being, who exists in a specific place
and time, that he is a human being who eats, sleeps, grows, diminishes
and dies. By contrast, the mereological sum of Socrates, the
Pinturricchio frescoes in the Bufalini Chapel in Rome, and a volume of
water equal to one pint in somewhere in the Indian Ocean is no such
unity. There is, of course, a mereological sum of these three diverse
items; but this sum does not exhibit the form of unity we observe in
Socrates. By the same token, Socrates is himself a mereological sum of
various atoms. Suarez takes it for granted that he is
*also* a mind- and language-independent privileged unity. If he
is right, then this further fact is either primitive or explicable.
Suarez thinks it explicable rather than primitive and tenders
the existence of substantial forms--in this case the form of
being a human being--as the appropriate explanatory posit.



Needless to say, this last step requires further amplification and
defence if it is to be at all credible. Again, however, one can see,
at a bare minimum, that Suarez has fully anticipated objections
to his views later taken as decisive; yet many of those unreflectively
satisfied by those later objections seem to show no awareness of his
anticipations.


### 2.4 Final Causation



In offering his spirited and protracted defense of substantial forms,
and of formal causation more generally, Suarez shows himself
aware of the need to articulate and defend core features of his
broadly Aristotelian framework, including some which later came in for
harsh criticism. Indeed, in the case of substantial forms, these
criticisms were finding voice already during his lifetime; he was, for
instance, an older contemporary of Descartes (b. 1596), who was twenty
years old when Suarez died in 1617. Descartes simply reports
without argument that substantial forms are "a philosophical
being unknown to me" (Letter to Morin, 12 September 1638;
Descartes 1984: 122). Because he is alert to such concerns, and
addresses them directly, Suarez appears to many historians of
philosophy as a sort of bridge figure between scholastic and early
modern philosophy. That may or may not be so, depending on the
principles of periodization presupposed by those offering this sort of
judgment. What is clearly true, however, is that he very often
develops Aristotelian theses in a manner betraying a willingness to
abandon those features of Aristotelianism which were to come in for
the harshest treatment by philosophers subsequent to him.



One such thesis pertains to his attitude towards teleological
causation. He endorses its centrality to his framework, but recognizes
that it requires articulation and defense. In the *Metaphysical
Disputations* it receives both:



> 
> 
> Although a final cause is in a certain way more eminent than all
> others and even prior [to them], its nature of causing is,
> nevertheless, more obscure and for that reason was almost entirely
> unknown to the ancient philosophers... For this reason ...
> in order to explain this more thoroughly and to resolve the
> difficulties, it should first be inquired as to whether an end is a
> cause, then in what manner and what it causes, and also how many kinds
> of ends there are and what the nature of causing is for each one of
> them (*DM* XXIII 1.1)
> 
> 
> 



Here, as elsewhere, Suarez shows himself to be aware of many of
the sorts of problem that came to form the basis for the widespread
rejection of teleological causation. Whether this redounds to his
credit, given his affirmation of their centrality to causation in
general, is an independent question.



We find him wondering expressly whether we are right to call the final
cause a cause at all:



> 
> 
> But that any whichever of these is a true cause can easily be proven
> indeed in the case of material, formal, and efficient [causes], for
> any whatever of these manifestly inflows some being... But
> concerning the final cause there can be some reason for doubting,
> since no real being is presupposed in it by which it could cause
> (*De fine vero potest esse nonnulla dubitandi ratio, quia nullum
> esse reale in eo praesupponitur, quo causare possit*: *DM*
> XIII 3.3)
> 
> 
> 



The worry, according to Suarez is that the final cause perhaps
has no "real being" (*esse reale*), in which case
it could not enter into any kind of causal relation. In so speaking,
he is not just saying in a colorful way that perhaps the final cause
does not exist, but rather that it is perhaps a mere *fictum*,
that possibly all of our appeals to final causation are merely
convenient fictions, able in principle to be replaced by appeals to
other kinds of cause, those with real being, like efficient causes. If
Ponce de Leon travelled to Florida in order to find the
Fountain of Youth, that is well and good; but the Fountain of Youth
does not exist--it has no *esse reale*--and so
*it* hardly caused him to do anything at all.



In more detail, Suarez offers six distinct worries about final
causation (*DM* XXIII 1.1-6): (i) Every cause is a
*principium*, but no end is a *principium*; hence, no
end is a cause of any kind; (ii) every cause infuses being
(*influit esse*) into its effect; no end does so; hence, no end
is a cause: (iii) a form is an end; if an end were a real cause, form
would thus have to cause itself; nothing causes itself; hence the end
is not a real cause; (iv) if an end is real cause, then it is also a
moving principle, and no end is a moving principle; hence, no end is a
cause; (v) natural agents (here Suarez is thinking of elements
and beasts) have determinate propensities; the postulation of ends for
beings with determinate propensities is idle; hence, the postulation
of final causes for natural agents lacks sufficient foundation; (vi)
one cannot specify what or in relation to what (*quid vel circa
quid*) a final cause causes; if not, then a final cause does not
impart motion; hence, a final cause is not a cause.



In different ways, these objections call into question the status of
the final cause as cause. Some of them directly anticipate and address
the sorts of considerations which came to dominate later, often
caustic rejections of final causation.



Be that as it may, Suarez roundly affirms final causation. It
is noteworthy, however, that he does so by offering significant
concessions to what came to be the textbook rejections of final
causation:



> 
> 
> Although the end is last in execution, nevertheless it is first in
> intention and under that aspect has the true nature of a principle.
> Moreover, the principle is not a *fictum* but is true and real
> (*verum et reale*), since it truly excites and moves. Hence,
> just as it has sufficient being by which it can exercise the sort of
> nature a principle has, so also it has the nature of a cause
> (*DM* XII 3.3).
> 
> 
> 



The endorsement is clear. The concession comes in the phrases
"first in intention" (*primum in intentione*) and
"under that aspect" (*sub ea ratione*), where
Suarez allows that a final cause qualifies as a cause only
because and to the degree that it is conceived by an intentional
agent. This, then, removes final causation from the realm of
non-intentional nature, even while affirming that final causes play an
ineliminable role in psychological explanation, particularly as
regards intentional action.



In a positive vein, Suarez argues on behalf of final causes by
means of a simple counterfactual argument. One might say, for
instance, that someone made a journey to the store *in order to buy
milk*. The buying of milk, then, is the final cause of that
journey. If it were discovered that store had unfortunately run out of
milk, then, suggests Suarez, the milk, or the buying of the
milk, would remain the final cause of the action all the same;
otherwise there would have been no journey. To the rejoinder that the
actual cause was not the milk, but the agent's *desire* to buy
milk, coupled with her belief that milk was to be had at the store,
Suarez readily agrees--but then insists that the desire
would not be the desire it was were it not a desire *for buying
milk*. He contends, in other words, that the identity conditions
of any desire to buy milk derive from the end, which is to say that
final causation remains in play in the sphere of intentional action by
providing the very identity conditions of the desires which serve as
efficient causes of intentional action. Still, this reasoning,
positive though it is, also contains a large concession: final causes
are implicated in the efficient causal realm only under the aspect of
intentionality. This is why Suarez ultimately concludes:



> 
> 
> I say first: in order for an end to cause, it is altogether necessary
> that it be cognised in advance. (*Dico ergo primo: ut finis causet,
> necessarium omnino est ut praecognitus sit*: *DM* XXIII
> 7.2)
> 
> 
> 


### 2.5 Beings of Reason (*entia rationis*)



Suarez seems to have conceded a great deal to the critics of
final causation in allowing that every final cause remains at root
implicated in the realm of the intentional. Still, again, he makes
this concession only by way of affirming the existence of final
causes. He has thereby also, however, evidently maneuvered himself
into an uncomfortable position whereby the Fountain of Youth, for
instance, is a final cause, even though it has no real being (*esse
reale*). Yet he himself insists that nothing is a cause, or
*principium* in general, without having real being. He thus
owes an explanation of how he avoids falling into a direct
contradiction on this point. The Fountain of Youth cannot both lack
real being and be a cause, of any kind.



He offers his explanation in last chapter of his *Metaphysical
Disputations*, which is dedicated to beings of reason (*entia
rationis*). This disputation is independently interesting because
it engages a question which has continued to fascinate metaphysicians
down to the present day, though it has taken various forms in various
periods of inquiry. This is the question of how we are to speak (or
think) about things that are not. If something is unavailable to be
spoken or thought about, then, presumably, we do not speak or think
about *it*. After all, as Suarez notes, non-existing
beings of reason about which we pretend to think or speak



> 
> 
> are neither true, real beings, because they are not capable of real
> and true existence, nor indeed do they have any true likeness with
> real beings. (*DM* LIV 1.4)
> 
> 
> 



Still, according to Suarez, we can and do think and speak about
beings of reason. It follows, then, that we do speak and think about
things which do not exist. It falls to the metaphysician to offer an
account of how this might be so. Indeed, for better or worse, the
metaphysician must address the topic of beings of reason, not least
because, invariably and inevitably, such (non-)beings force themselves
into view along the periphery of any inquiry into real beings. To take
but one example, even if we think that there is no void, indeed even
if we think that it is impossible that there should be a void, and so
think that the void is merely a being of reason, we will find
ourselves discussing "the void" when investigating the
characteristics of space, motion, matter, and quantity. We may ask,
for instance, whether the existence of motion requires the existence
of the void, and, even if we decide that it does not, our inquiry into
space and motion--certainly appropriate topics of inquiry for the
metaphysician--has led us to consideration of a non-existing
being, the void. So, in Suarez's terms, inquiry into beings
inevitably propels the metaphysician into consideration of
non-existing beings of reason. So, *entia rationis*--these
non-beings--require a treatment by the student of being.



It is first of all striking in Suarez's treatment that the
class of *entia rationis* includes a seeming motley of cases,
extending beyond non-existing objects of thought and reference (and so
beyond non-existent final causes). In addition to final causes which
are not, the student of being finds himself confronted with
true-sounding appeals to phantasmagorical and mythical beasts and
creatures of fiction of various sorts, even though their subjects have
vacuous reference ("Pegasus is a winged horse"). More
importantly, Suarez countenances a whole range of other
non-beings among *entia rationis*, some of which are more
pedestrian than creatures of fiction: negations, such as being
not-human; privations, that is, lacks keyed to positive properties,
such as blindness; and also (what he takes to be mere) logical
abstractions, such as being a consequent or an antecedent; and
taxonomical categories, which, in view of his general nominalism, he
takes to be mere metaphysical abstractions, such as species and
genus.



The first thing to notice about this list is its heterogeneity.
Suarez is interested in a group of entities, broadly conceived,
that end up in metaphysical discourse even though they do not exist.
Note, too, that he does not say that such entities do not exist
"strictly speaking" or "fully" or
"really" or that they exist "in the mind or
imagination only". Instead he insists: they do not exist. Even
so, in metaphysics and physics, we speak of genera and species; in
logic, of antecedents and consequences; in causation and metaphysics
more broadly, of privations; and in many walks of life, of
non-existent entities, often enough innocently imputing causal
profiles to them.



Focusing on the last case, which is in any case the most colorful and
captivating, Suarez argues that it falls to the metaphysician
to come to terms with such true sentences such as "The gryphon
is fierce", "Gryphons do not exist", and even
"The gryphon frightened the children to the point where some of
them began to cry uncontrollably". How can these sentences be
true, when there is nothing here about which one may talk or think?
What must be the case, if these sentences are to be accepted as true?
Perhaps, one may think, the gryphon must exist in some way, if it is
to be fierce; that if it can be said not to exist, then it--the
thing about which the speaker is speaking--must exist in some one
way but not in some other; and, most of all, that if it is to be
implicated in the causal network, it certainly must exist--or
else it could not stand in a causal relation to anything at all.
Indeed, Suarez himself gives voice to just these sorts of
contention in other contexts. For example, this last observation is
perfectly reflected in a claim he makes about the necessary conditions
of formal causation: "The first requisite [for formal causation]
is the actual existence of a form itself" (*prima est
actualis existentia ipsius formae*: *DM* XV 6.3). The
question, then, is how beings of reason can enter the causal network
if they fail this first requirement of any cause: that it exist.



At first it may seem as if Suarez intends to hold that beings
of reason do, in fact, have some mode of existence, perhaps some sort
of subsistence or some mode of being short of the sort manifested by
what he calls "true, real beings". For instance, he
contends that "beings of reason must be granted"
(*DM* XLIV 1.4), and then hastens to add that:



> 
> 
> such beings are neither true, real beings, because they are not
> capable of real and true existence, nor indeed do they have any true
> likeness with real beings--[any likeness, that is,] in terms of
> whose account they would have a common concept of being with them.
> (*DM* XLIV 1.4).
> 
> 
> 



He also insists that: "fictitious things ... or beings of
reason, are not said to endure truly and properly, because they do not
exist" (*DM* L 1.1). So, again, it may seem as if he
means to contend that they exist, though not in the manner of true and
real beings, or, again, insofar as they may be said to endure at all,
they do so not truly or but rather only improperly.



This is not at all, however, his view of *entia rationis*. His
approach to them is in one way disarmingly simple: he insists that
they do not exist (Shields 2012b). Even so, he maintains, one may
freely speak of them *as if* they existed. Indeed, just as
"they are fashioned or apprehended as if they truly existed,
they are further conceived as if they endured". His view, more
fully:



> 
> 
> Again, that objective being, even though the being of reason in itself
> is nothing, still necessarily supposes some real being, on which it is
> founded, or from whose denomination or relation that objective being
> quasi-results (*quasi resultet*). Therefore, that cause which
> produced such a real being is the cause of the being of reason
> (*DM* LIV 2.3).
> 
> 
> 



His picture is that beings of reason are such that, although they do
not exist, one may speak and think *as if* they existed, where
the thinking in question is a real, existing formal structure in the
mind of an actual thinker. Thinking is in this way contentful, because
founded in some real feature of some real thinker, but not therefore
such as to take an object. One may think of Socrates or one may think
of a gryphon; the gryphon's being thought, however, unlike Socrates's
being thought, is not an extrinsic denomination of the gryphon, as it
is of Socrates; for Socrates is and the gryphon is not. Were there a
gryphon, says Suarez, the formal structure of the thinker would
indeed give rise to an extrinsic denomination of it, no more or less
that Socrates's being thought gives rise to such a feature of him.
Still, he insists, because there is not such a gryphon, there is not
such a feature to be had by him.



In short, then, the content of the thought derives from the real,
formal structure in the mind of the thinker and not from the object.
That holds fixed across all episodes of thought. It is just that some
thoughts are about something and others about nothing at all. Their
being about nothing, insists Suarez, hardly robs them of their
contentfulness: the motion of a missed punch is a real motion, and not
the same as the motion of a missed kick; but neither makes contact,
and so in neither case is there something contacted, something kicked
or punched. On the contrary, nothing is kicked in a missed kick, and
nothing punched in a missed punch. In the same way, then, nothing is
thought or referred to when there is no object of thought or
reference. In such cases, all the causation involved eventuates from
and reaches only the actual formal structures of an actual mind:



> 
> 
> all that efficient [causation] is terminated--as to a terminus of
> real production--at the formal concept of the mind itself, and it
> stops there. (*tota vero illa efficientia, ut ad terminum realis
> productionis terminatur ad formalem conceptum ipsius mentis, et ibi
> sistit*: *DM* LIV 2.3)
> 
> 
> 



Taking all that together, *S* can speak of the gryphon, though
there is no gryphon there to be spoken of; and the thinking in this
case is in all respects like the thinking that goes on in one who is
thinking of Socrates. The difference is that Socrates comes to have an
extrinsic denomination--*being thought of by
S*--whereas the gryphon, who does not exist, does not acquire
this or any other denomination, extrinsic or intrinsic. There is,
nonetheless, a fact about the world such that were there to be a
gryphon, it would have acquired such a denomination, precisely because
some actual person would have been in the relevant state of thinking
about it.



Exactly the same holds true, according to Suarez, of the other
sorts of *entia rationis* he countenances: negations,
privations, and abstractions. They are not, but this does not preclude
our thinking of them and speaking about them. Our doing so in no way
invests them with existence of any kind. This is how Suarez
insists that *entia rationis* "must be granted"
even though they lack "any true likeness with real beings"
(*DM* LIV 1.4).


### 2.6 Metaphysical Theology



Needless to say, Suarez regarded God as a being and not a being
of reason. He also thought that unaided natural reason could go a long
way towards providing a philosophically tenable description of the
nature of God. Because of this, he devoted two book-length
disputations, *Metaphysical Disputation**s* XXIX and XXX
to the topics of God's existence and nature, the second of
which, devoted to God's nature, comprises 17 sections covering
his essence and attributes, insofar as these are accessible to human
reasoning.



In his treatment of God's attributes, Suarez concentrates
on perfection, 
 infinitude,[14], 
 simplicity, immutability, oneness,
invisibility incomprehensibility, and ineffability; he also
investigates God's life, knowledge, will, omnipotence, and
 omnipresence.[15]
 The breadth, extension, and detail of
Suarez's discussion makes it impossible to consider all
of these topics here. We may, however, consider a subset of these
attributes as representative of his approach: perfection, infinitude,
simplicity, and immensity or omnipresence. Here we
treat only the foundational topic of God's perfection.



Suarez maintains, in common with many others of his period,
that God's attributes can be known by us as they truly are only
by means of a manifest vision of him, something made possible only
through his supernatural aid. Even so, natural reason can offer a
limited knowledge of God and can proceed, according to Suarez,
in two different ways. It can deduce divine attributes from the
knowledge of the effects of divine operation (*a posteriori*).
Alternatively, it can proceed by deducing one attribute from another
(*a priori*) (*DM* XXX.1. intro). Suarez applies
both of these demonstrative methods to each of the divine attributes
in turn.



Can it be demonstrated by natural reason that God is by his essence an
absolutely perfect being? This question is immediately complicated by
the fact that Suarez recognizes two central senses of
'perfection' (*DM* XXX.1.1). In one sense, which he
calls 'privative', what is perfect is whole and lacks
nothing required *by its nature*; in these sense we could
speak, for instance, of a perfect horse. In a second sense, which
Suarez calls 'negative or absolute', we refer to
what is absolutely perfect--perfect, that is, not relative to the
standard set by a thing's nature but in absolute terms. Such
perfect entities necessarily have or contain every other perfection.
Suarez wishes to demonstrate that it belongs to the essence of
God to be perfect in both of these senses.



Suarez believes that imperfection in the sense of lacking
something that is due to nature always comes from external causes. A
horse without tail is a horse which had its tail removed or was
somehow prevented from growing one. But there is nothing capable of
making God less than perfect in this sense: nothing can damage him or
otherwise interfere with his perfection. God is not vulnerable to
imperfection coming from without (*DM* XXX.1.2). This can be
shown *a priori*, Suarez contends, by reasoning from
God's other attributes. In the first instance, we can deduce
God's perfection from his simplicity; because he is simple, God
is non-composite. Since partless entities cannot be partially
diminished, but either exist totally or are totally destroyed, it
follows that if God is simple, and exists, he must be perfect in the
sense of being complete (*DM* XXX.1.2).



Let us turn now to absolute perfection. Every perfection, says
Suarez, is either created or uncreated. If a perfect entity is
uncreated, that entity must be God. If, however, something is created,
it owes its existence to God. Created perfection is the effect of a
cause able to bring about such an effect . According to a causal
principle held in common by Suarez and many of his peers, this
cause must be more noble and more excellent than its effect (if only
in the sense that it possesses perfection in itself and not as caused
by something else). From this, Suarez deduces that it belongs
to the essence of God to posses in some way the perfections of all
created beings in a mode that is more noble than the way in which
these perfections exist in created beings. This, then, constitutes his
*a posteriori* proof for God's absolute perfection
(*DM* XXX 1.4).



Suarez thinks that God's absolute perfection can also be
demonstrated *a priori*. As the first cause of everything and
the most necessary being, it is necessary that God is also first in
absolute perfection. Suarez adds that the very idea of
perfection requires us to posit a completely perfect thing to serve as
standard for other beings admitting of degrees of perfection. This
standard, he infers, must be God (*DM* XXX.1.5).



Suarez notes, however, that his view that the most perfect
being must be understood as *containing* the perfections of all
other beings is not self-evident and requires being argued for as it
is liable to be wrongly interpreted. Human beings are more perfect
than kangaroos, for example, but do not contain within themselves the
perfections of kangaroos (for one thing, we cannot hop as high)
(*DM* XXX 1.5).



Suarez maintains instead that God is not simply and in fact
more perfect than all other beings: he is more perfect in so far as he
is *the first principle* or origin of all the perfections of
all other beings. To be the first principle or origin of another is
not just to be more perfect than every other thing: a first principle
must additionally be more perfect in *a determinate way* than
the perfections of the beings for whose perfections he serves as an
origin. This determinate way of being perfect Suarez labels
'eminent'.



A second *a priori* proof offered by Suarez (*DM*
XXX.1.6) is that: (i) God is the most perfect not only of all existing
beings but also of all *possible* beings; (ii) therefore--for
reasons explained below--God must be perfect in a higher sense than
all other possible beings; (iii) this higher sense of perfection
consists in containing the perfections of all other possible
beings. The first premise (i) is shown thus: if there is a more
perfect being than God, either it is a necessary being and exists in
act, or it is not yet existent and would be produced by something else
in order to exist. If this other, productive entity already exists,
then we do not have a
*possible* being which more perfect than every actual
being. On the other hand, this entity could not be merely possible,
since a less perfect being cannot create a more perfect being. The
question thus arises: who or what would be able to create it? It
follows, then, that it is not possible to think of a possible being more
perfect than God. That (ii) follows from (i) is shown thus: if the
first being does not contain all the perfections of other beings, it
is not the most perfect of all possible beings since in that instance
one could think of a possible being that is at least as perfect as the
first being. It would then contain all the other perfections.



Suarez suggests a third *a priori* proof as well: the
first being must be more perfect than any other being not in specific
respects but absolutely, which is to say in *all* respects.
Thus, for instance, human beings are more perfect than dogs in most
respects, but not as concerns their olfactory capacity. God must be
more perfect in every respect and for this reason he must include all
the perfections of lesser beings (*DM* XXX.1.7).



One might be tempted to infer on this basis that God must have the
perfections of all lesser beings in the same mode as they exist in
those beings. Suarez rejects this inference. Following other
theologians, he distinguishes between absolute and *secundum*
*quid* perfections. Absolute perfections are those that can
inhere without conflict or opposition in the same thing. These, then,
belong to the very idea (or "formal concept") of God. By
contrast, the *secundum* *quid* perfections can be
incompatible with one another and can be hypothetical in the sense
that they presuppose some imperfection in that in which they inhere
(for example, sensory perception seems to involve the imperfection of
being unable to know the qualities of things perceived in an
unmediated way. So, we could not say that God "sees" in
the sense we see). So, God has that perfection
"eminently", which means that his creative essence has the
capacity to communicate to or cause these perfections in beings (for
example to communicate the capacity of vision to us) (*DM*
XXX.1.8).



The absolute (non-*secundum* *quid*) perfections are
possessed by God formally (that is, not eminently). These perfections
are also attributed to creatures, but not, then, in the same way. God
is wise, but his wisdom has only some formal fittingness
(*covenientia*) to ours. For Suarez, our talk about
God's absolute perfections is analogical.


## 3. Moral Theory and Natural Law



Suarez thus entered deeply into the metaphysical debates of his
day. He was hardly, however, therefore indifferent to other, more
practical areas of philosophy and society. Along with his fellow
scholastic theologians, Suarez was deeply interested in moral
and social goodness and cared greatly about the sphere of human
action. Also like his fellow scholastics, he tended to preface his
treatment of the moral goodness and badness of human actions with a
discussion on the nature of the morality of action as such. The
morality of human actions, he held, is that by virtue of which a human
action can contract the species of goodness or badness (*De
bonitate et malitia actuum humanorum*, disp. 1, proem, in
Suarez, *Opera omnia* IV). To use an analogy: there is
bad art and good art, but there are also properties which make an
object a work of art, that is, an object which can be specified as
good or bad *qua work of art*. For Suarez, in
distinction to some present-day moral theorists, the nature of an act
cannot be divorced from the mode of its production; neither, then, can
its normative evaluation.



Suarez operated in a context where the two main competing views
of the nature of morality were that: (1) the morality of the act
consists in its being in principle able to conform to the external
standards provided by reason; and (2) the morality of the act belongs
to the act itself, quite apart from any external standards.



Suarez, against Vazquez (Vazquez 1608: I, 414, d.
73 c. 9 n. 43), held the second view. For him, the morality of the act
consists in its dependence on volition as the productive impetus
behind the act and on reason as the guiding set of rules that the
agent takes herself to be guided by in shaping the precise
characteristics of the act (*De bonitate*, sect. 2, n. 15).
Suarez provides the parallel of the production of an artefact.
An artefact can be evaluated by the standards applying to artefacts
(say, beauty or ugliness), because its producer took herself to be
guided, in the act of production, by the rules of her art (*De
bonitate*, sect. 2, n. 17). The mode of production defines the
nature of the object. Thus, two objects that look identical may be
susceptible to different standards of judgment, because one might be
an artefact (say, a carved stone) and the other not (say, a stone
which fell from a cliff and broke, resulting in the same shape as the
carved stone).



For Suarez, it was important to argue that the morality of
human action belongs to the act itself. This he regarded as a
necessary precondition to arguing that the moral goodness or badness
of actions can be ascertained regardless of the presence of commanding
or prohibiting divine law. If acts are to have pre-positive moral
properties, they must also have a pre-positive aptitude to be morally
good or bad.



Operating within this basic framework of morality, Suarez
developed a theory of natural law that has attracted much attention
despite his consciously attempting to position himself midway between
two radically opposed views about natural law. There was, on the one
hand, extreme naturalism, which he attributed to Gregory of Rimini
(*DL* II, 6.3). According to extreme naturalism, the moral law
does not require an exercise of legislative will by God. The natural
goodness and badness of actions exhaustively generates all our moral
obligations. Even if God had not have given us laws, or even, indeed,
if God had not existed at all, on the version of extreme naturalism
favored by Gregory of Rimini, all the presently existing moral duties
would still apply.



At the other extreme was the voluntarism attributed by Suarez
(rightly or wrongly) to William of Ockham and to a lesser extent also
to Duns Scotus (*DL* I, 6.4). According to this view, actions
have no intrinsic (pre-positive) goodness or badness (or, even if they
have some goodness and badness, this does not determine or constrain
what we ought to do). Obligations come from divine commands resulting
from the free exercise of God's will. Further, in this view, God is
entirely free as to the content of the moral law. Should God command
us to hate him, then this is what we ought to do.



As is characteristic of his general approach to his predecessors,
Suarez disagrees with both views without wholly disregarding
either. He agrees that natural law, if it is genuine
"law", requires an act of *imperium*, a command by
the legislator expressing his will. Therefore, any obligation falling
under natural law derives its moral force from God's legislative act
(*DL* I, 5.13). In Suarez's terminology, natural law is
not "indicative"; it is not merely a way of telling us
about what is good and what is morally bad in itself. Rather it is
"preceptive": it creates obligations that would otherwise
not exist.



So far, then, Suarez's position agrees with voluntarism. He
also, however, believes that what is naturally good is necessarily
commanded by God and what is naturally bad is necessarily prohibited.
Therefore, the *content* of natural law, unlike its binding
force, does not have a positive source. Rather, it is dictated by
created nature itself, to which God's commands respond.



Interpreters disagree on whether Suarez leaves room for
pre-positive moral duties (that is, moral duties which do not draw
their binding force from God's commands) and on whether, if this is in
fact the case, such duties are compatible with his general account of
natural law. At the center of the debate is Suarez's assertion
that the performance of an intrinsically bad action constitutes
sinning and involves *culpa* (guilt/blame) *regardless of a
prohibition from above*. According to John Finnis, this amounts to
positing the existence of pre-positive obligations incompatible with
Suarez's view that all law involves the expression of the will
of a superior (Finnis 1980: 46-49). Thomas Pink construes
Suarez's theory of natural law in a way that aims to avoid the
incoherence produced by pre-positive obligations. On his construal,
the expression of a superior's will gives us *additional*
reasons to perform an act that is already obligatory by reason of its
intrinsic moral properties (Pink 2005: 42). 



Still, thus far Finnis's charge of incoherence remains a threat. After
all, Suarez does say that the force to oblige (*vis
obligandi*) can *only* come from an act of will. A solution
is provided by Terence Irwin. In his reading, what intrinsic moral
properties of actions generate are not obligations, but rather duties
(*debita*) (Irwin 2012). Obligations, unlike duties, involve a
sort of "moral motion". The idea is that obligations
constitute an act of imposing an obligation, an *obliging*.
Obliging is the tool the holder of legitimate power has in order to
move those under his command to do some actions and refrain from
others. As is clear from Suarez's discussions on the influx of
divine grace, God's grace moves us morally (rather than physically) by
making the performance of some good actions more attractive to reason
than they would otherwise be (*De Gratia Dei seu de Deo
Salvatore*, III.41.3, in Suarez, *Opera omnia*
VIII). Intrinsic goodness does not involve an obliging because it is
not impelling us to do anything; unlike the presence of law or the
effect of grace, intrinsic goodness is not a new influx that was not
there before. But this is not to say that intrinsic goodness does not
exert a rational attraction on moral agents; it is simply that our
natural tendency to do what is good is not the result of any sort of
moving or pushing. In this reading, there is no contradiction between
making room for the existence of pre-positive duties and insisting
that obligations only originate in law. The distinction between
obligations and duties is not merely a verbal one, but points to the
difference between what in Aristotelian terms would be an efficient
and final cause of motion.



It emerges, then, that Suarez's theory of natural law is less
comprehensive than some have thought: it covers, *qua lawful*,
only those "oughts" that result from the command of the
superior.


## 4. Political Authority



What, if anything, makes political subjection legitimate? For
Suarez, the question is compelling given that "man is by
his nature free and subject to no one, save only to the Creator"
(*DL* III, 1.1).



As Suarez conceives of the basic position of humanity, the
inhabitants of a hypothetical pre-political state would have two main
reasons to try to transcend it. First, families, the basic unit of
human organization, are not self-sufficient: they contain within
themselves neither the offices nor the arts necessary for survival.
They simply lack the requisite knowledge. Secondly, evoking the idea
of a state of war, Suarez argues that if families were divided
from one another, peace could hardly be preserved among men, nor could
wrongs be duly averted or avenged (*Defensio fidei catholicae, et
apostolicae adversus anglicanae sectae errores*, III.1.4, in
Suarez, *Opera omnia* XXIV). Inhabitants of the
pre-political state are thus capable of envisaging a possible
political state, in which cooperation between families exists for some
common purpose. They can thus realize that power must be vested in one
or some individuals because "nobody can be preserved unless
there exists some principle whose function is to provide for and seek
its common good" (*DL* III, 1.4-5).



The constitutive act of the community cannot simply be a decision by
each family to live in proximity to each other and interact
peacefully. This would create, at most, a certain familiarity or
friendship, but would fail to generate what Suarez terms a
"moral union". This moral union originates instead in the
assumption of the duties and obligations that make political life
possible. These, in turn, are incurred by an act of "express or
tacit pact" between the would-be citizens to help each other,
together with their consent to subordinate themselves to a superior
(*De opere sex dierum*, V.7.3, in Suarez, *Opera
omnia*
 III).[16]



This view places Suarez very close to the social contract
school. It is a central tenet of this school that the citizens
contract an obligation towards the political authority because they
have given express, tacit, or hypothetical consent to it. Some of
Suarez's interpreters have resisted this conclusion, arguing
that, for him, although consent creates the state, it does not
directly cause political obligation. In this interpretation, just as
the right of a person to rule over his body "naturally
results" (to use Suarez's phrase) from his being a person
and is independent from the means by which he was generated (so that,
say, an *in vitro* generated human being would also have these
rights), so the right of the ruler(s) to rule over the city naturally
flows from the fact that the city is a city, independently from the
consent that generated it.



Other interpreters, such as Schwartz, argue that, for Suarez,
consent directly causes political obligation without the mediation of
the political community (Schwartz 2008). What the political community
causes by "natural resultancy" is not the citizens'
political subjection to the ruler. Rather, it is the community's
original rightful incumbency to the role of the ruler (its
self-mastership). For Suarez, to say that the self-mastership
of the political community emanates by natural resultancy is simply a
way of saying that this mastership has no external cause (such as
God). The right to self-rule of the political community has the same
origin as the political community itself: consent. This effect is not
mediated by any intervening cause.



Note that for Suarez the ruler's power is not the result of a
transfer or alienation of individual self-rule rights. Hence,
Suarez's ruler is not, as in Hobbes, the depositary of a part
of the citizens' right over themselves. The seat of power remains
always, if only latently, with the community (Schwartz 2008: 71).


## 5. Distributive Justice



Suarez's highly original discussion of distributive justice has
been unjustly neglected. Its originality resides in the rejection of
some of the main principles of the Aristotelian conception of
distributive justice that significantly shaped the modern conception,
including that of, for instance, John Rawls. Among these were the
principles that distributive justice operates only when total funds
are insufficient to meet some ideal or desired standard and that a
just distribution is a just *division* and so presupposes a
divisible good and multiple recipients.



His fundamental break with Aristotelianism, however, resulted from his
rejection of the view that distributive justice distinctly aims at
proportional allocation. For Suarez, the types of justice
should be distinguished by the type of right which they oversee rather
than by the ideal distributional pattern at which they should aim.
Distributive justice oversees a right *to* the thing, rather
than a right in the thing (a *ius ad rem* rather than a *ius
in rem)*. The *ius ad rem* was usefully defined by Austin
as "a right of compelling *you* to pass me a right *in
rem*" (Austin, 1869: 993). Unlike infringements of *iura
in rem*, those of *iura ad rem* do not call for
restitution. For example, if in a competition for public office, the
best candidate is not chosen, he has an actionable claim against the
appointment committee, but he cannot say that he has been deprived of
something that was his.



For Suarez, in order to have a distributive justice claim it is
not enough to exhibit the quality that in principle entitles you to a
share. He provides this illustration: if someone works in your
vineyard without your knowledge or consent, this does not mean that
you owe him wages. Distributive justice requires a background pact
between the owner of the common stock (the community) and its members.
This pact defines the criteria that allow members to have actionable
claims to the receipt of a share of the common stock.



Although this pact creates rights, the rights have pre-positive
foundations. In order to ground a debt to a reward an action must be
of a value commensurate to the reward. Not all posited conditions
indebt the promisor as a matter of justice, but only those that
correspond to a pre-contractual fittingness or commensurability
between the reward and the action or personal quality.



Distributive justice, insofar as it is the sovereign's justice,
governs also the enjoyment of property rights. The sovereign (in the
political case, the community or its appointee) retains a form of
superior ownership (which he terms "supreme dominium")
over private possessions (*Disputatio de Iustitia* 1.12, in
Suarez, *Opera omnia* XI). This means that the sovereign
can withdraw your property rights, say over your car, and transfer
them to someone else (say, to be used for security patrols). You could
lodge a complaint that your private ownership of the car was more
conducive to social utility (say, because you are a doctor). By
lodging this complaint, however, you would not be claiming a violation
of your property rights (as in the case of theft), but rather, of your
right *to* property rights under agreed, public criteria
regulating their allocation.


## 6. Just War



Suarez extended his conception of justice to the arena of war,
writing one of the most exhaustive and lucid treatments of the justice
of war available in the scholastic corpus. It covers justice *ad
bellum*, *in bello* and, also, *post bellum*.



The discussion of *ad bellum* justice concerns the fundamentals
of just war theory, including: the moral permissibility of war; the
difference between defensive and offensive war; legitimate authority
to declare war; the requirement of a reasonable hope of victory; the
constraints imposed by charity in any resort to war; and the moral
implications of the domestic costs of wars which are in principle
just. It also contains a compelling discussion of the duty of
participants in war to investigate the presence of a just cause, as it
applies to decision-makers, advisors, and various types of combatants,
including mercenaries.



His discussion of *ius in bello* considers, among other things:
the category of "innocents" and their immunities; the
"doctrine of double effect" as applied to war; the
self-defence rights of collateral victims; the attendant possibility
of a war that is just on both sides (if the collateral victims decide
to defend themselves); and the peculiarities of civil war and the
permissibility of deceiving the enemy. It also dwells on topics that
are not typically discussed by today's just war theorists. These
include the difference between participating in highly risky missions
and using suicide as a weapon, the justice of concerted confrontations
(both mutually agreed and forced by one of the parties), the
permissibility of military alliances with infidels, the rights of
soldiers against the sovereign, and justice in the distribution of
booty.



Interwoven in these discussions one can find topics that today would
be classed in the *ius post-bellum* category, in particular, on
whether victory, regardless of its justice, confers rights, and on the
rights of just victors to the property found in enemy territory. Here,
to appreciate the basic tenor of his approach, we may survey the
*ad bellum* just cause requirement.



A just cause of war is "a grave wrong which cannot be avenged or
repaired in any other way" (*DDB*
 4.1).[17]
 Examples are the unjust seizure of property of the prince or
subjects, violations to the rights of nations, and, controversially,
grave injuries to the honor or reputation of the prince or the
subjects (*DDB* 4.3).



Suarez places significant moral weight on the distinction, only
tacitly present in Thomas Aquinas's treatment, between defensive and
offensive or aggressive war. The defensive use of force aims to foil
an attempt to inflict a wrong. The offensive use of force, by
contrast, aims at obtaining some form of satisfaction for wrongful
harms that have been already perpetrated (*DDB* 1.6).
Suarez devotes some attention to cases in which applying this
binary distinction becomes complicated. Because aggressive or
offensive war seems morally more problematic, it was natural for
Suarez to devote the most attention to it. Offensive war is an
essentially a *punitive* response to the refusal to redress
past wrongful harms. In the same way that domestic peace requires
empowering the republic to punish domestic wrongs, so international
peace requires that someone be vested with the power to punish
international wrongs. Suarez reasons that, given the absence of
a commonly acknowledged superior, this power must belong to each
sovereign. Sovereigns thus assume the role of judges. A just offensive
war is therefore the meting out of just punishment (*DDB*
4.5).



Justice, however, is not likely to be served if the judge is also a
party to the dispute. Suarez is well aware of this problem but
tries to downplay it. He notes that rulers are less inclined than
private persons to act on emotion and the thirst of vengeance.
Moreover, they are regularly assisted by the more temperate opinion of
their expert advisors. Recognizing that this may not be enough to
surmount the problem, Suarez candidly says that once we accept
that someone must have the power to punish in the international arena,
for all their faults, there are simply no better candidates for this
role than sovereigns (*DDB* 4.7). Furthermore, the unjust party
has only itself to blame for the judge's partiality since, by refusing
to give satisfaction, it exposed itself to sentencing by a biased
judge. The argument comes across as flawed, since whether or not
satisfaction was due is precisely part of what is at stake.



The presence of a just cause of war is not always sufficient to make
war morally permissible. Some wars may be just but nevertheless
violate other moral injunctions. This may happen, for instance, when a
wealthy and prosperous country demands satisfaction for a wrong done
by a poor country, knowing it is impossible for it to do so without
falling into utmost deprivation. In these circumstances, resorting to
war may be just but nevertheless uncharitable. However, violations of
the duties of charity do not impose a posterior duty to restitute, so
long as justice has not been infringed (*DDB* 4.8).



There is another sense in which the presence of a just cause is not
sufficient to make war morally permissible. While making decisions
about war, the ruler must consider not only whether his cause is just,
but also whether its prosecution by the sword is beneficial to the
realm's subjects. A war may pursue a just cause and yet involve
injustice towards the subjects of the warring country if it manifestly
harms the subjects' common good. In such cases, the ruler acts as
tyrant; the subjects are merely treated as means to avenge wrongs done
to him, while they themselves suffer serious loss (*DDB*
4.8).



For war to be morally permissible, is it necessary that, in addition
to having a just cause, it is also certain that the just cause will be
achieved? The Renaissance Thomist commentator, Cardinal Thomas de Vio,
known as Cajetan, thought
 so.[18]
 Suarez considered such absolute certainty to be unachievable,
and requiring it to be undesirable: waiting to attain this degree of
certainty could result in a dangerous postponement of the business of
justice. In addition, he thought that this requirement discriminated
against weaker countries by making it more difficult for them to
pursue justice as compared to stronger countries (*DDB*
4.10).