groundwork for modern PhilosoPhy
4. Suarezian themes of the objective concePt To the second member of the binary, the conceptus obiectivus, belong
the following five themes: the three types of distinction, substance and modes, disproportion between matter and spirit, individuation, and the optimal universe. To examine these in turn:
First, Suárez classifies three types of distinction: real, conceptual, and modal. 39Broadly, the types of distinction are two, conceptual and real. Conceptual distinctions are devices which the human mind (the feeblest kind of the intellect in existence in the universe) employs to make sense of a reality that it cannot grasp at once. In order that it un-derstand a thing distinctly and clearly, it attributes to the thing many predicates distinct in reality or in concept.40 Real distinctions are of two kinds, major (or real proper) and minor, or modal. When entities are separable, and each can exist without the other, they exemplify the major real distinction. When an entity can exist without another, but the latter cannot exist without the former, we have the minor real, or modal, distinction. A man can exist without running, but if he runs, his running is inseparable from him even by divine power. Running is a mode of the substance man. Descartes makes use of this distinction 38 In angels, De angelis, lib. 2, cap. 5, n. 20 [2: 121]; [further references to De angelis are numerical only], not in humans, De angelis 2: 7: 3 [2: 135].
39 DM 7, De variis distinctionum generibus [25: 245-274].
40 DM 8: 3: 18 [25: 288]: Intellectus noster per unum simplicem ceptum non concipit adaequate, neque exhaurit distincte et clare rem con-ceptam... postquam aliquo modo confuse et inadaequate illam concipit, ut illam distincte et adaequate cognoscat, illi attribuit plura praedicata sive re sive ratione distincta.
to established his dualism, and SPINOZA (1632-1677) to argue for his monism.
Second, substance and modes.41 Suárez, like philosophers who are concerned with reality’s perplexing multiplicity, arranges it in predica-ments through which the multiplicity can be controlled. The most renowned classification into predicaments is that of ARISTOTLE (384-322 BC), which is broadly binary, substance and accidents; but “ac-cidents” have 9 subdivisions, with the result that there are in all 10 predicaments. Philosophers like THOMAS AqUINAS (c.1225-1274) advance a priori reasons for the comprehensive character of the Ar-istotelian predicaments, but Suárez finds these reasons arbitrary and faulty, and concludes that an a priori classification can be comprehen-sive only when it is a binary, of two contradictorily opposed members.
Suárez himself did not propose such a classification as a substitute for the Aristotelian decade; but one of his groupings, the binary of substance and modes, was taken as the substitute by Descartes, MALE-BRANCHE (1638-1715) and (in particular) Spinoza—who leaned on it to resolve his problem of the One (substance) and the Many (modes).
Third, the disproportion between matter and spirit.42 Suárez states that a material thing cannot act on spirit, because there is no propor-tion between those two kinds of entity, and that a material object can-not produce a spiritual form by its natural powers, because it belongs to a totally inferior order. He takes this disproportion as proof that the angel’s mind cannot acquire its knowledge of material reality from that reality, but needs to have that knowledge innate in the angel’s mind, infused there directly by God. How then, given the disproportion, can the human intellect work with material sensations? By the fact that both the immaterial cognitions of that intellect, and the material sen-sations at its disposal, derive from the human soul which is the form of the human body. This corporeal connection downgrades the human intellect to proportion its activity to the actions of the body. But the angel’s intellect has no connection whatever with any material body, and so remains totally separate from everything material. As Des-cartes rejects the Scholastic theory that the human soul is the form of the body, and contends that thought (mind) and extension (body) 41 DM 33-36 [26: 329-491].
42 De angelis, 2: 7: 10 [2: 128].
are wholly unrelated, his human person becomes a dual unintegrated entity.
Fourth, individuation.43 Suárez declares, and Descartes and Leibniz agree, that whatever exists in reality is singular, and is individuated by its own entity. For Suárez however, no complete created entity is free from composition; the only simple entity is God. But Leibniz postu-lates the existence of innumerable created entities simple in structure, all working harmoniously according to a divinely pre-established plan.
These are the monads.
Fifth, the optimal universe.44 Suárez, like many Scholastics, accepts the theory that the present universe is perfect, because God is a per-fect cause, and a perper-fect cause can only have a perper-fect efper-fect. But the Scholastic perfection is typical, while the Leibnizian is individual. In other words the Scholastic universe is perfect in the sense that it pos-sesses all the types of divine perfection (existent in God formally or eminently) as are imitable by created things, such as mineral, plant, animal, human and angelic. But Leibniz’s universe is perfect in that each individual in it is perfect according to its capacity. He contends that God cannot act without a reason or prefer the less perfect to the more perfect.
Suárez seems to have had an uncanny sense of the possible anamor-phic distortion of his thought, and to have taken precautions against it by his anticipated refutations of some of the main tenets of the mod-ern philosophers: such as the dualism of Descartes, the monism of Spinoza and the monadism of Leibniz (see Chapter 6).
Anamorphosis of the Suarezian concepts we have listed above was generally a rationalist phenomenon and rarely an empiricist one. The Suarezian concepts taken over by the empiricists retained much of their original character, such as the basic importance of experience (empiricists); the primacy of the singular (empiricists, GLISSON); the distinction between existence and subsistence (BERkELEY); the con-ceptualist view of the universals (LOCkE); the dual meaning of essence (LOCkE); and the analogy between God and creation (BERkELEY).
The one Suarezian concept that underwent anamorphosis at the em-pircist’s hands was that of substance and modes, that after a prolonged degradation was eventually eliminated by HUME.
43 DM 6: 2: 2 [25: 206], DM 5: 6: 1 [25: 180].
44 DM 33: 1: 8 [26: 332].
In sum: the thought of Suárez anamorphosed gave rise to modern philosophy. The judge destined to preside at the Last Judgment of immemorial realist philosophies and to rule on their distortions had to suffer the indignity of affecting the emergent idealisms through a distortion of his own ideas. However, by retaining their original char-acter these ideas produced the Suarezian super-system, combining two syntheses, the theological and the philosophical. We shall first be dealing with the theological synthesis as linked with the philosophical (Chapter 1) and in then concentrate on the philosophical synthesis alone (Chapter 2).