Francisco Suárez

Francisco Suárez (Granada, 1548 – Lisbon, 1617), known as the Doctor Eximius, was a Spanish Jesuit theologian, philosopher and jurist. He belongs to the last great phase of scholasticism, the so-called Second Scholasticism, and is regarded as one of the leading figures of the School of Salamanca in its final period. His work marks the passage from scholastic thought toward early modern philosophy. Thinkers as different as Leibniz, Grotius, Pufendorf, Schopenhauer and Heidegger all found reason to cite him as a source of inspiration.

The youngest son of a noble family, he began law studies at Salamanca in 1561, following his father's path. A sermon by the Jesuit Juan Ramírez in 1564 changed his plans, and he joined the novitiate of the Society of Jesus at Medina del Campo. After his training at Salamanca under Martín Gutiérrez, he taught philosophy at Segovia, where he was ordained a priest in 1572, and later taught theology in Ávila, Valladolid, Rome, Alcalá de Henares, Salamanca and, from 1597, Coimbra. In Valladolid he commented on the first part of Thomas Aquinas's Summa theologiae without merely repeating it: he set it against the philosophical debates of his day while keeping Aquinas's principles at the centre. In Rome, where he taught until 1585, he wrote many theological treatises, but the damp climate worsened his health, and his superiors moved him to the drier Alcalá.

His masterwork, the Disputationes metaphysicae, appeared in 1597. In it he reviewed the earlier tradition and presented metaphysics as an autonomous discipline, which is why the book is often seen as the first systematic treatment of the subject since Aristotle. In his account, essence and existence are identical in God, while in finite beings they are distinct only conceptually and cannot be really separated. On the problem of universals he steered a middle course between the realism of Duns Scotus and the nominalism of William of Ockham. His Thomism was critical rather than merely repetitive, deepening Aquinas's own principles.

In his great legal work, the Tractatus de legibus ac Deo legislatore, he distinguished eternal law, natural law, the law of nations, human positive law and divine positive law. He accepted the social contract as a way of organising people, but not as the source of political power, which he traced to God. Together with Robert Bellarmine he defended the right to armed resistance against an unjust rule, and he is often considered a key figure in the origins of international law.

He retired in 1615 and moved to Lisbon, where he died in 1617 and was buried in the church of São Roque in the Bairro Alto. His reputation grew after his death, and his metaphysics gave rise to a school of its own, Suarism, which departed from other Thomists on several points.