A Study of the Development of the Subject of Metaphysics in Francisco Suárez

Fancisco Suárez (1548-1617) was the last great scholastic philosopher of the Western Renaissance. He opened up new horizons for his contemporary Scholars regarding certain philosophical and metaphysical discussions. Although he was an advocate of Aristotelian- Thomistic tradition, he believed that metaphysics was in demand of certain fundamental modifications. Aristotle, on the one hand, emphasized the unity of the subject of science and, on the other hand, spoke as if he believed in the existence of multiple subjects for metaphysics. Post-Aristotle philosophers, from Greek and Alexandrian philosophers to Islamic and Christian ones, particularly and most importantly Ibn Sīnā, made great efforts to remove the existing inconsistencies. In his Disputationes Metaphysicae (Metaphysical Disputations), through examining the various ideas that had been propounded in this regard until his time, Suárez presented a new approach and introduced “being qua being” as the subject of metaphysics. In order to further explain his view, he elaborated on certain expressions such as “real being” as opposed to actual being and “mental being” as opposed to formal being. Moreover, he maintained that real being is a “general mental concept of being in its nominal sense”. In this paper, through a meticulous study of the meaning of “real being” in Suárez’s view, the authors intend to investigate and evaluate his place in the tradition and history of philosophy regarding the subject of metaphysics.