Philosophy of Francisco Suarez (PDF)

During the seventeenth century Francisco Suarez was considered one of the greatest philosophers of the age. He was the last great Scholastic thinker and profoundly influenced the thought of his contemporaries within both Catholic and Protestant circles. Suarez contributed to all fields of philosophy, from natural law, ethics, and political theory to natural philosophy, the philosophy of mind, and philosophical psychology, and-most importantly-tometaphysics, and natural theology. Echoes of his thinking reverberate through the philosophy of Descartes, Locke, Leibniz, and beyond. Yet curiously Surez has not been studied in detail by historians of philosophy. It is only recently that he has emerged as a significant subject of critical and historicalinvestigation for historians of late medieval and early modern philosophy. Only in recent years have small sections of Surez's magnum opus, the Metaphysical Disputations, been translated into English, French, and Italian. The historical task of interpreting Surez's thought is still in its infancy. The Philosophy of Francisco Surez is one of the first collections in English written by the leading scholars who are largely responsible for this new trend in thehistory of philosophy. It covers all areas of Surez's philosophical contributions, and contains cutting-edge research which will shape and frame scholarship on Surez for years to come-as well as the history of seventeenth-century generally. This is an essential text for anyone interested in Surez, the seventeenth-century world ofideas, and late Scholastic or early modern philosophy.