Suárez – A Philosopher of Transition or of the Birth of Ontology

Abstract

The present work studies the different interpretations proposed in the 20th century concerning the metaphysics of Francisco Suárez. They are divided in three groups: essentialist, existentialist, and objectivist. The essentialist interpretation has been maintained fundamentally by Thomist authors, the most outstanding scholar among them being E. Gilson. The existentialist interpretation, headed by J. Hellín, can be analyzed as a reaction to the essentialist interpretation. The noetic-objectivist interpretation finds its inspiration in M. Heidegger, and its definitive impetus in the works of J. F. Courtine. With Courtine, we will maintain that Suárez cannot be classified either as an essentialist or as an existentialist. Efforts to classify him as such will encounter concrete difficulties, since Suárez opens up a new realm for metaphysics, the ontological, situated within the perspective of intentionality and beyond the perspective of effectivity and creation within which medieval metaphysics moves.