Forthcoming from Oxford University Press:

The Philosophy of Francisco Suárez

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Book Content: 11 Chapters

Abstract: Chapter 6 [pdf download]
Author: Helen Hattab (University of Houston)

The Causal Role of Substantial Forms in Suárez

In Metaphysical Disputation 15, entitled “On the Formal Cause of Substance”, Suárez characterizes both matter and form as incomplete substances which, by their union, constitute a complete substance. Setting himself against Aquinas, among others, he thereby denies that the form of a substance is the formal cause of the being of its matter. Rather the substantial form serves only as the formal cause of the matter/form composite. In this manner, Suárez severely curtails the causal/explanatory role that substantial forms traditionally played in Scholastic Aristotelian metaphysics of substance. This paper will argue that Suárez instead places greater emphasis on the causal/explanatory role that substantial forms played in natural philosophy. It will focus primarily on his a posteriori arguments for the existence of substantial forms in Disputation 15 and his discussion of the causal efficacy of accidents in Disputation 18. It will conclude by considering the arguments that some anti-Aristotelians writing after the publication of Suárez’s Metaphysical Disputations deployed against the substantial form. The goal is to examine the extent to which Suárez’s emphasis on natural philosophical concerns and empirical arguments for substantial forms shifted the terms of the debate about the existence of substantial forms.