Talk:Francisco Suárez

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Suárez is definitely important within the history of philosophy, but to call him the greatest scholastic philosopher after Aquinas seems a bit of a stretch; surely John Duns Scotus or William of Ockham are worthier of that honorific.

Be bold and correct it in the article. --Pjacobi 08:07, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

Well, no, don't; this is a very common claim, found in a wide variety of sources. --Mel Etitis (Μελ Ετητης) 15:08, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] god or God

I just edited the page to change "god" to "God". The sentence in which the word is used includes "argued Suarez", and certainly he would have used "God". If the use of the word implied some position on the question of whether God actually exists, there might be a more debatable issue. Given that it is merely reflecting Suarez's own usage, it seems to me anachronistic and ideological to use "god". ChrisWolfe49 20:21, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] essence and existence

This passage is a little confusing (I've italicized the problem areas.): "He held (along with earlier scholastics) that essence and existence are the same in the case of God (see ontological argument), but disagreed with Aquinas and others that the essence and existence of finite beings are really distinct. He argued that in fact they’re merely conceptually distinct; rather than being able to exist separately, they are conceivable separately. That is, rather than being logically separable, existence and essence are epistemically separable."

The beginning is alright, but the end is a little troublesome.

1. rather than being able to exist separately... Essence existing separately from existence seems like an odd notion. Indeed, existence existing is odd too. I know Suarez maintains that there is no real distinction between essence and existence, only a conceptual one, but saying this distinction doesn't "exist" obfuscates the matter. Maybe we should avoid the use of the word exist here, since it has a rather technical meaning in Scholasticism.
2. rather than being logically separable, existence and essence are epistemically separable It's hard to understand what the author is getting at in this distinction because of many different notions of epistemology and logic that have been held over the centuries. In fact, logic has been considered a field of epistemology at times. Perhaps this should be rephrased in less weighty terms. BrokenToilet 20:46, 15 May 2007 (UTC)