Forthcoming from Oxford University Press:

The Philosophy of Francisco Suárez

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Book Content: 11 Chapters

Abstract: Chapter 9 [pdf download]
Author: Marleen Rozemond (University of Toronto)

Unity and Multiplicity in Súarez’s Soul

Historically many philosophers have seen the human soul as the simple subject of mental operations and defended the simplicity of the soul or mind on the basis of the unity of consciousness. Suárez’s conception of the human soul was importantly different. First, while he held that the soul in itself is unitary, he thought it is the subject of a multiplicity of really distinct faculties. At the same time, he wished to account for the connections between mental contents that pertain to these different faculties, and he did so by appealing to the fact that they belong to the unitary soul. Another important difference is that for Súarez the soul is not just the principle of the mental, but the principle of life. Thus he often presented the connections between the faculties and their unity in the same soul as characteristic of life rather than of the mental. This paper examines how Suárez uses the idea of the unitary soul to explain the connections between the activities of its really distinct faculties and how his conceptions of the mental and life play a role in this solution.