Collected Studies on Francisco Suárez, S.J. (1548–1617) by John P. Doyle (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 477 outstanding guide to an important and often neglected period of the history of philosophy. M. V. DOUGHERTY Ohio Dominican University Columbus, Ohio Collected Studies on Francisco Suárez, S.J. (1548-1617). By JOHN P. DOYLE. Edited by VICTOR M. SALAS. Leuven: De Wulf-Mansion Centre/Leuven University Press, 2010. Pp. xvii + 416. 69.50i (cloth). ISBN 978-905867 -737-2. Suarez enjoys such a knowledge of medieval philosophy as to put to shame any modern historian of mediaeval thought. On each and every question he seems to know everybody and everything, and to read his book is like attending the Last Judgment of four centuries of Christian speculation by a dispassionate judge, always willing to give everyone a chance, supremely apt at summing up a case and, unfortunately, so anxious not to hurt equity that a moderate verdict is likely to be considered a true verdict. Rather than judge, Suarez arbitrates, with the consequence that he never wanders far from the truth and frequently hits upon it, but, out of pure moderation of mind, sometimes contents himself with a “near miss.” So wrote Étienne Gilson in one of the more rhetorical passages of one of his more rhetorical books, Being and Some Philosophers (Toronto, 1952 [p. 99]). A lesser writer might have been content to damn Suárez with faint praise. Gilson damned the Jesuit with great praise and, with uncommon stealth, turned the Scholastic virtues of moderation and modesty into vices unfit for the bolder frontiers charted by existentialism. For good or for ill, Gilson’s rhetoric still prejudices academic studies of Francisco Suárez, and the eminent Burgundian’s long shadow is cast over many of the studies in this fine collection, which reprints several classic articles on Suárez published over the last forty years by John Doyle. As Doyle says, “my progression has been uneven, marked by visions and revisions. As I have gone on, there have been inconsistencies and perhaps even contradictions, which a charitable interpreter may see as developments. Connected is a clear change of tone in the articles themselves. A Gilsonian Thomist, I started out very critical of Suárez. But learning more, I gained respect for him not just as an historian, and himself a figure in history, but also as a deep and clear thinker. While I am to this day a Thomist, who owes his basic philosophical outlook to Gilson, I believe that from Suárez I have learned how to write history in a less critical and more sympathetic, albeit not less truthful way” (xv). Over the course of these essays, as Victor Salas says in his thoughtful BOOK REVIEWS 478 introduction, we see that “what emerges in Doyle’s more mature work . . . is the realization that, simply put, Suárez is swimming in much different, and one could even argue, deeper waters than Thomas Aquinas” (viii). Suárez, who was taught theology by the Dominican Juan Mancio (14971576 ), the student and fourth successor of Francisco de Vitoria (1492/3-1546) to the Catedra de prima of Theology at the University of Salamanca, not only towers above his peers in Doyle’s telling, but also shines among many of the greatest minds in the early modern era, Scholastic or otherwise. The first group of eight essays is “theoretical, centering on the Suarezian conception of being and metaphysics” (xi). The basic conception and motivation of these essays is Gilsonian, although Doyle does remark that he would most likely modify these essays along the lines suggested by the work of Rolf Darge’s Suárez’ transzendentale Seinsauslegung und die Metaphysiktradition (Brill, 2004). This group of essays ranges over topics such as the reality of possibles, the analogy of being, Suárez’s proof for God’s existence, the unity of the ‘scientific’ habit, and the importance of extrinsic denomination in Suárez. The second theme, which is covered by the final four essays, concerns the “practical side” of Suárez’s philosophical and theological interests, including his views on society, law, sovereignty, jurisdiction, war, conquest, and human rights. The reprinted essays are rounded off with a new introduction to Suárez’s life and works, which should...