bTH18053ZKG_Heft1_2018 29.05.

18 14:02 Seite 1

Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte

Zeitschrift
RM
Aus der Reihe
Die Religionen der Menschheit
für
Geschichte des
globalen Christentums Kirchengeschichte
In drei Bänden:
Teil 1: Frühe Neuzeit
129. Band 2018
herausgegeben von Heft 1
Jens Holger Schjørring und
Norman A. Hjelm
2017. 709 Seiten. Fester Einband. € 179,–
ISBN 978-3-17-021931-1
Die Religionen der Menschheit, Band 32

Teil 2: 19. Jahrhundert

herausgegeben von
Jens Holger Schjørring und
Norman A. Hjelm
2018. 584 Seiten. Fester Einband. € 179,–
ISBN 978-3-17-021932-8
Die Religionen der Menschheit, Band 33

129. Band 2018 Heft 1

Teil 3: 20. Jahrhundert
herausgegeben von
Jens Holger Schjørring,
Norman A. Hjelm und Kevin Ward
2018. 811 Seiten. Fester Einband. € 179,–
ISBN 978-3-17-021933-5
Die Religionen der Menschheit, Band 34

Leseproben und weitere Informationen unter www.kohlhammer.de

W. Kohlhammer GmbH · 70549 Stuttgart
vertrieb@kohlhammer.de Kohlhammer
Kohlhammer
Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte  ISSN 0044-2925
Herausgegeben von Franz Xaver Bischof, Irene Dingel, Johannes Helmrath, Jochen-Christoph
Kaiser, Volker Leppin, Klaus Unterburger, Ulrich Volp und Günther Wassilowsky.
Verantwortlich für den Aufsatzteil: Ulrich Volp.
Verantwortlich für den Rezensionsteil: Irene Dingel.
Die Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte ist zugleich Zeitschrift der Sektion für Kirchengeschichte
im Verband der Historiker Deutschlands.

Inhalt  129. Band (Vierte Folge LXVII) Heft 1

Dorothee Schenk, Die Christianisierung Islands zwischen Religion und Politik.. . 1

Mihai-D. Grigore, The Past as Pre-Text. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Sebastián Contreras Aguirre, Is Francisco Suárez a voluntarist philosopher?. . . . . . . 41
Gabriele Stüber, „Ein treffliches Werk“ von „ergreifender Anschaulichkeit“. . . . . . 57
Literarische Berichte und Anzeigen. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
Die Zeitschri erscheint jährlich in drei Heen mit einem Gesamtumfang von 27 Bogen. Der Bezug des
Jahrgangs 2018 kostet im Abonnement € 219,00 inklusive Porto- und Versandkosten; das Einzelhe € 79,80
zuzüglich Versandkosten. In den Bezugspreisen sind 7% MWSt. enthalten. Kündigung des Abonnements
nur zum Abschluss des laufenden Bandes möglich.
Verlag und Gesamtherstellung: W. Kohlhammer GmbH; Postanschri: 70549 Stuttgart; Lieferanschri:
Heßbrühlstraße 69, 70565 Stuttgart; Telefon 0711/7863-0; Telefax 0711/7863-8263. Anzeigen: W. Kohl-
hammer GmbH, Anzeigenverwaltung, 70549 Stuttgart, Telefon 0711/7863-7223, Telefax 0711/7863-8393.
Zuschrien, Anfragen und Manuskripte für den Aufsatzteil sind zu richten an Prof. Dr. Ulrich Volp, Semi­
nar für Kirchengeschichte und Territorialkirchengeschichte, Ev.-Theol. Fakultät, Johannes Gutenberg-Uni-
versität Mainz, 55099 Mainz.
Es wird gebeten, Manuskripte möglichst per E-Mail als elektronische Version und als übereinstimmenden
Ausdruck einzureichen. Für die Manuskriptgestaltung kann bei der Redaktion des Aufsatzteils ein Merkblatt
angefordert werden. Durch die Einsendung eines Manuskripts an die ZKG erklärt sich der Autor gleichzeitig
bereit, das Manuskript einem peer-Review-Verfahren zu unterziehen.
Anfragen, Besprechungsexemplare und Manuskripte für den Rezensionsteil sind zu senden an Prof. Dr. Irene
Dingel, Leibniz-Institut für Europäische Geschichte (IEG), Alte Universitätsstraße 19, 55116 Mainz. – Bei
unverlangt eingehenden Rezensionsexemplaren kann keine Gewähr für Besprechung und Rücksendung
übernommen werden.
Die Zeitschri und die in ihr enthaltenen einzelnen Beiträge und Abbildungen sind urheberrechtlich
geschützt. Alle Urheber- und Verlagsrechte sind vorbehalten. Der Rechtsschutz gilt auch für Vervielfälti-
gungen, Übersetzungen, Mikroverfilmungen und die Einspeicherung und Verarbeitung in elektronischen
Systemen. Jede Verwertung bedarf der Genehmigung des Verlages.
Der Verlag erlaubt allgemein die Fotokopie zu innerbetrieblichen Zwecken, wenn dafür eine Gebühr an die
VG WORT, Abt. Wissenscha, Goethestr. 49, 80336 München, entrichtet wird, von der die Zahlungsweise
zu erfragen ist.

Verlag W. Kohlhammer Stuttgart

Anschriften der Mitarbeiter an diesem Heft
Dorothee Schenk
Theologische Fakultät
Platz der Göttinger Sieben 2
37073 Göttingen
PD Dr. Mihai-D. Grigore
Elsa-Brändström-Str. 5
55124 Mainz
Sebastián Contreras Aguirre
Profesor
Facultad de Derecho
Universidad de los Andes, Chile
Av. Mons. Álvaro del Portillo
12.455 Las Condes, Santiago, Chile
Dr. Gabriele Stüber, Archivdirektorin i. K.
Zentralarchiv der Evangelischen Kirche
der Pfalz Domplatz 6
67346 Speyer
ZKG 129. Band 2018-1
 Is Francisco Suárez a voluntarist
philosopher? 1

Sebastián Contreras Aguirre

There is no better time for studying the philosophy of Francisco Suárez than in the
fourth centennial of his death (1617–2017). For years, scholars have broadly claimed
that the Suárezian doctrine of law is voluntarist and contrary to the Aristotelian and
Scholastic tradition of law. This position, stemming from a partial reading of the
Suárezian corpus, does not do justice to this author’s effort to offer a balanced synthe-
sis of the Scholastic justification of law. Those who insist that Suárez was a voluntarist
rely exclusively on De legibus ac Deo legislatore. This text, although it represents the
pinnacle of Salamancan legal thought, says nothing about human acts, and passes
over the relationship between intelligence and will. However, a comprehensive ap-
praisal of Suárez’s philosophy requires reading the statements in De legibus ac Deo
legislatore within the broader context of his writings on anthropology and philosophi-
cal psychology (De anima), his theory of justice (De iustitia Dei and Quaestiones De
iustitia et iure), his doctrine of causality (Disputationes metaphysicae), politics (Defen-
sio fidei), his theory of action (De voluntario et involuntario) and the end of human
being (De fine hominis). One might also add the Rome lectures Quaestio De legibus,
which contain his commentaries on Thomas’s treatise on the law. Suárez, in my
opinion, always belonged to the Aristotelian and Thomistic tradition of natural law.
Nevertheless, he was already criticized during his lifetime for trying to separate hims-
elf from Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas. Suárez himself and his superiors responded
to these accusations.2 Whether he was Thomistic, Aristotelian or anti-Aristotelian,
Suárez has always been of interest to scholars of law and philosophy. On the one
hand, they call him „Pope and Prince amongst metaphysicians“ (omnium Metaphysi-
corum Principis ac Papae).3 He has been described as an „important, clear and in-

1
The author is grateful for the sponsorship of Fondecyt Chile, project 11150649. I appreciate the
valuable comments from professors Joaquín García-Huidobro and Alejandro Vigo.
2
Francisco Suárez, Suarez à Éverard Mercurian, in: Raoul de Scorraille, François Suarez de la
Compagnie de Jésus. D’après ses lettres, ses autres écrits inédits et un grand nombre de documents
nouveaux vol. 1. L’étudiant. Le maître, Paris 1912, 161. Among Suárez’s superiors it was said: „in
theology he has always written in accordance with the doctrines of St. Thomas“. Jean de Atienza à
Éverard Mercurian, in: Scorraille, l.c., 160.
3
Adriani Heereboord, Meletemata philosophica, Amsterdam 1665, 27.
42 Sebastián Contreras Aguirre

sightful writer“;4 and he has even been presented as a man of „the greatest virtue,
inclined to reading, and a great friend of seclusion, isolation and chastity“.5 Hugo
Grotius and Christian Wolff emphasize his intellectual gifts and penetration,6 and
Martin Heidegger places him above Thomas Aquinas.7 On the other hand, he has
also been called a syncretist, nominalist and voluntarist.8 Any research, whatever its
subject may be, requires a clarification of the terms under discussion. Similarly, an
examination of Suárez’s supposed voluntarism demands a clear definition of the
meaning of legal voluntarism. We call voluntarism any doctrine that i) gives priority
to the will,9 ii) claims that the will is the only cause of the goodness or evil of human
acts, independently of any objective evaluation,10 and iii) proposes that the system of
laws is reduced to the positive, divine or human law.11 These are, in general, the
attributes that define legal voluntarism. Bearing these attributes in mind, I will review
the Suárezian doctrine of law in order to discern whether it fulfils these criteria.
Within this schema, I will deal with three aspects of Suárez’s thoughts, i.e.: (1) the
meaning of the primacy of the will over reason in the definition of law, (2) the
affirmation of an objective morality, independent of the judgment of any superior
authority, and (3) the existence of a natural law or domain of legality prior to positive
law.

I. Primacy of the will

Scholars who interpret Suárez as a voluntarist tend to found their reading on his
definition of law as a command of the will.12 Authors such as Michel Villey, Franco
Todescan, Michel Bastit and Jean-François Courtine claim that Suárez destroys the
Scholastic ordo rationis, deforming and contaminating the Thomistic theory of law

4
Wilhelm Windelband, Lehrbuch der Geschichte der Philosophie, Tübingen 1908, 299.
5
Juan Suarez de Toledo, Lettre à l’historien de Suarez, Descamps, in: Scorraille, François Suarez
de la Compagnie de Jésus vol. 1 (cf. n. 2), 17.
6
Hugo Grotius, Epist. cliv, Ioanni Cordesio, 15 octobre 1633, in: Raoul de Scorraille, François
Suarez de la Compagnie de Jésus. D’après ses lettres, ses autres écrits inédits et un grand nombre de
documents nouveaux vol. 2. Le docteur. Le religieux, Paris 1912, 437; Christian Wolff, Philosophia
prima sive ontologia, Frankfurt 1730, § 169, 138.
7
Martin Heidegger, The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics. World, Finitude, Solitude, Bloo-
mington 1995, § 14, 51.
8
Michel Bastit, Naissance de la loi moderne. La pensée de la loi de saint Thomas à Suarez, Paris
1990, 307–335; id., Interprétation analogique de la loi et analogie de l’être chez Suárez. De la similitude
à l’identité, in: Les Études philosophiques 3 f. (1989), 429–443, here 430; André de Muralt, L’enjeu de
la philosophie médiévale. Études thomistes, scotistes, occamiennes et grégoriennes, Leiden 1993, 71;
Thomas Pink, Reason and obligation in Suárez, in: Benjamin Hill/Henrik Lagerlund (eds.), The Philo-
sophy of Francisco Suárez, Oxford 2012, 175–208.
9
Brian Bix, A Dictionary of Legal Theory, Oxford 2004, 219.
10
André de Muralt, L’unité de la philosophie politique. De Scot, Occam et Suárez au libéralisme
contemporaine, Paris 2002, 34.
11
Rémi Brague, La loi de Dieu. Histoire philosophique d’une Alliance, Paris 2005, 396.
12
Francisco Suárez, De legibus ac Deo legislatore, Paris 1856 (Opera omnia 5 f.), l. I, c. 5, n. 24.
For citations in English, I follow the edition: Gwladys L. Williams/Ammi Brown/John Waldron
(transl.), Selections from three works of Francisco Suarez, S.J., Oxford 1944.

ZKG 129. Band 2018-1

 Is Francisco Suárez a voluntarist philosopher? 43

and inaugurating a moral doctrine that denies practical reason the capacity to grasp
the justice or injustice of human acts.13 At the beginning of the treatise De legibus,
Thomas Aquinas asks whether law belongs to the reason or to the will. He asserts
that, properly speaking, law consists in a rational ordering. Nonetheless, in that same
place he teaches that the practical reasons’ power to move comes from the will, even
though the desire of the rational appetite, in order to be efficacious, depends on the
ordering of the reason. Therefore, in some way, the law can be called an imperium
of the will.14 The will, nevertheless, is not the cause of the goodness of the norm.
According to Suárez, the law, when just, expresses a „will adjusted to reason“.15 In-
deed, he indicates that the ordinance of law – natural or positive – is not limited to
the act of the will. The ordination of the law belongs simultaneously to the will and
to the reason, either because the will is a rational potency, or because practical reason
determines it.16 Therefore, the ordinance of the law consists essentially in the act of
the will, provided there is a command of the reason. However, in line with the doc-
trine of St. Thomas, Suárez teaches that only after the act of the will the intellect can
effectively exercise its imperium. Without that act of desire that imperium is rendered
impotent.17 In Suárez’s words, the intellectual judgment only moves qua object. In
appearance, it moves efficaciously, but in fact it only moves by an act that is prior to
the appetite.18
In De legibus ac Deo legislatore, Suárez defines law through its efficient cause. On
the basis of the principle according to which where there is something that exists by
reason of another, there is only a single thing to be found there, the author explains
the joint activity of the intellect and the will in the formation of the law.19 Thus, and
because where there is something that exists by reason of another, the later is the
first and principal, the law is defined more by its motive force than by its capacity
for indicating what the human good is.20 Nothing of what I have said contradicts the
mediation of practical reason in the creation of the law. In a minor text, where Suárez

13
Michel Villey, Philosophie du droit, Paris 2001, 227; id., La formation de la pensée juridique
moderne, Paris 2013, 347–368; Franco Todescan, Lex, natura, beatitudo. Il problema della legge nella
Scolastica spagnola del sec. XVI, Padova 1973, 130–149; Bastit, Naissance de la loi moderne (cf. n. 8),
312–317; Jean-François Courtine, Nature et empire de la loi. Études suaréziennes, Paris 1999, 45–67.
14
Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, I–II, q. 90, a. 1, ad 3. Corpus thomisticum, recognovit ac
instruxit Enrique Alarcón automato electronico, Pampilonae ad Universitatis Studiorum Navarrensis
aedes A. D. MMV, in: http://www.corpusthomisticum.org/iopera.html (access on 06/01/2018).
15
Norbert Brieskorn, Francisco Suárez und sein Gesetzesbegriff im Kontext, in: Manfred Walther/
Norbert Brieskorn/Kay Waechter (eds.), Transformation des Gesetzesbegriffs im Übergang zur Mo-
derne? Von Thomas von Aquin zu Francisco Suárez, Stuttgart 2008, 105–124, here 117.
16
Suárez, De legibus ac Deo legislatore (cf. n. 12), l. I, c. 12, n. 3.
17
Francisco Suárez, De anima, Madrid 1978–1991, d. XII, q. 1, n. 7.
18
Francisco Suárez, Disputationes metaphysicae, Paris 1861 (Opera omnia 25 f.), d. XIX, s. 6, n. 8.
19
Suárez, De legibus ac Deo legislatore (cf. n. 12), l. I, c. 4, n. 6.
20
A similar argument can be applied to prayer. In De religione Societatis Jesu, Suárez explains that
prayer is defined by affect. In his opinion, even though all the classes of affect are derived from the
intelligence, prayer originates more in desire than in knowing: „while the fact of talking with God is
an act of the intelligence […] it is the affect that is put into practice, presupposing the principle of
propter quod unumquodque tale, etc. Finally, to say it in simple terms, prayer consists in a perfect act
of the will, since when a thing exists in function of another, the whole is reduced to the latter“.
Francisco Suárez, De religione Societatis Jesu, Paris 1857, l. IX, c. 5, n. 6.
44 Sebastián Contreras Aguirre

deals with military orders, he states that „the soul of the law is the reason and will“.21
Thus, as with any human act, it is the joint action of the human being’s two higher
faculties that defines the giving of the law. Suárez wishes to clarify the precise reach
that the acts of the intellect and will have in the giving of the law: The intellect plays
an indicative function in showing us what the good or evil is for a rational nature;
and the will has a preceptive (or reflexive22) function, insofar as it creates a link of
subordination between the superior authority, who moves, and the subject, who is
moved. Thus, the law, qua „imperium over another“,23 is not just illuminative. It
is, above all, motivational. The law only exists when the judgment of the intellect,
accompanied by the will of the ruler, obligates others to behave in a certain way. The
Suárezian emphasis on efficacy can be assigned to the role played by efficient causa-
lity at the end of the Middle Ages and the beginnings of the Modern Age. The
invention of precision machinery, the military use of black powder, the printing press,
an increasing use of technology in work, etc., impacted the European way of concei-
ving reality so deeply that law too began to be studied according to those patterns.
As a result, the central issue was to command with efficacy. We should note that, for
Suárez, the efficient cause is primary.24 Suárez calls it the exemplar of all causes and
causa per antonomasiam.25 It is like the source and principle that infuses being into
the effect.26
As with any human act, the act of giving the law originates in rational knowledge.
Suárez, like Aristotle and St. Thomas, thinks that the rational appetite is tied to
knowledge. This is a general Suárezian principle. We find it in his political writings,
in his metaphysical texts and in his works of philosophical psychology. It is also
present in his legal works, both in published and in manuscript form, and it is exten-
sively developed in the treatises on the end of the human person and the goodness
of human acts. Thus, he states that „the operation of the will cannot exist without
the knowledge of the reason“,27 „the will that acts against the decision of reason is
evil“,28 and that „in order that the action of the will be moral, it must derive from
the perfect deliberation of the reason“.29 For Suárez, reason is the origin of the appe-
tite,30 its rule31 and its root,32 so that „prior to each act of the will there must be a

21
Francisco Suárez, Un parecer de Suárez sobre un estatuto de la orden militar de Alcántara, in:
Archivo teológico granadino 11 (1948), 271–285, here 282.
22
Francisco Suárez, De voluntario et involuntario, Paris 1856 (Opera omnia 4), d. IX, s. 3, nn. 1–
14.
23
Suárez, De voluntario et involuntario (cf. n. 22), d. IX, s. 3, n. 3.
24
Suárez, Disputationes metaphysicae (cf. n. 18), d. XXVII, s. 1, n. 11.
25
Suárez, Disputationes metaphysicae (cf. n. 18), d. XII, s. 3, n. 6.
26
Suárez, Disputationes metaphysicae (cf. n. 18), d. XII, s. 3, n 3.
27
Francisco Suárez, De fine hominis, Paris 1856 (Opera omnia 4), d. II, s. 4, n. 4.
28
Francisco Suárez, De bonitate et malitia humanorum actuum, Paris 1856 (Opera omnia 4), d.
VII, s. 1, n. 12.
29
Suárez, De bonitate et malitia humanorum actuum (cf. n. 28), d. I, s. 1, n. 6.
30
Suárez, De anima (cf. n. 17), d. X, q. 1, n. 3.
31
Suárez, De bonitate et malitia humanorum actuum (cf. n. 28), d. I, s. 2, n. 9.
32
Suárez, De anima (cf. n. 17), d. X, q. 1, n. 3.

ZKG 129. Band 2018-1

 Is Francisco Suárez a voluntarist philosopher? 45

judgment of the understanding, by which the act of the will is directed and illumina-
ted“.33
In De anima, Suárez adds that „the elicited appetite arises from knowledge“34 (and
that „the appetite without knowledge is dead“35). Among the acts of these potencies,
the act of reason has priority, because the desire of the appetite always presupposes
an intellectual judgment.36 In other words, every form of desire begins in the repre-
sentative content of the intellect regarding the appropriateness or inappropriateness
of the things of the world. That act is not a mere noticing of objective properties,
but a judgment on the goodness that these objects have for me.37
Suárez notes that reason is more perfect than the will, because its object „is simpler
and more abstract, and in some way more immaterial than the object of desire“.38 In
the same way, reason is nobler because it is a rational faculty per se, as opposed to
the will, which is only rational by participation. Now, „a faculty that is rational
through its essence, such as the understanding, is more perfect than a faculty that is
rational by participation, such as the will, which is a blind potency that cannot ope-
rate if it is not guided by the reason“.39 Therefore, „it is in the understanding that
the perfection of the human being is brought to completion“.40
This doctrine is repeated in Disputationes metaphysicae. There he states that the
will follows the reason,41 because the former cannot move towards something which
it does not know.42 Indeed, in order for an act of desire to occur, an intellectual
judgment regarding the goodness, usefulness and appropriateness of the object must
anticipate it.43 Not even the uncreated will, the eternal law, can operate without an
act of knowledge: The divine intellect determines the divine will, because it offers the
matter that can serve as the focus of its desire.44 For the same reason, the definition
of the eternal law as divine will cannot be deemed voluntarist. Suárez never abandons
the central hypothesis of non-voluntarist readings of the law: Every law, including the
eternal, must conform to reason.45 Hence, Suárez denies that the will may command
arbitrarily. The will is only the efficient cause of law. Its formal cause continues to be
the rationality of its contents, as it is in St. Thomas, Thomas Cajetan, Francisco de
Vitoria, Domingo de Soto, Melchor Cano, Domingo Báñez, etc. These authors, just
like Suárez, consider the reason’s power to move, in some way, as coming from the

33
Suárez, De voluntario et involuntario (cf. n. 22), d. IX, s. 3, n. 4.
34
Suárez, De anima (cf. n. 17), d. X, q. 3, n. 11.
35
Suárez, De anima (cf. n. 17), d. X, q. 3, n. 11.
36
Suárez, De anima (cf. n. 17), d. XII, q. 1, n. 2.
37
Alejandro Vigo, Intellekt, Wunsch und Handlung. Handlungsproduktion und Handlungsrecht-
fertigung bei Francisco Suárez, in: Kirstin Bunge et al. (eds.), The Concept of Law (lex) in the Moral
and Political Thought of the School of Salamanca, Leiden 2016, 229–248, here 234 f.
38
Suárez, De anima (cf. n. 17), d. XII, q. 3, n. 2.
39
Suárez, De anima (cf. n. 17), d. XII, q. 3, n. 2.
40
Suárez, De anima (cf. n. 17), d. XII, q. 3, n. 7.
41
Suárez, Disputationes metaphysicae (cf. n. 18), d. XXX, s. 16, n. 31.
42
Suárez, Disputationes metaphysicae (cf. n. 18), d. XIX, s. 6, n. 10.
43
Suárez, Disputationes metaphysicae (cf. n. 18), d. XIX, s. 6, n. 10.
44
Suárez, Disputationes metaphysicae (cf. n. 18), d. XXX, s. 16, n. 44.
45
Alejandro Vigo, Interpretación y aplicación de la ley según Francisco Suárez, in: Juan Cruz
(ed.), La justicia y los juicios en el pensamiento del Siglo de Oro, Pamplona 2011, 33–50, here 33.
46 Sebastián Contreras Aguirre

will. Therefore, given that the rational appetite is the primary motor of human acts,
the explanations of Thomas Aquinas, Cajetan, Vitoria, Soto and in general the non-
Suárezian explanations of natural law must also hold to the imperium of the will.46

II. Objective morality and intrinsic evil acts

At the same time that he defends the role of the superior authority in the examination
of the morality of human acts, Suárez teaches that certain acts are evil independent
of that authority’s precept: Their injustice is prior to the imperium of those in autho-
rity.47 In this sense, against all forms of voluntarism, he thinks that even if people
had no superior authority, or they were not governed by any authority at all, they
would still act unjustly if they lied or if they killed others with private authority.
These acts, along with mutilation, robbery, sedition and adultery, are directly against
the good of rational human nature, and their morality does not depend on the act
of any authority.48 The will of a superior authority may not contradict negative natu-
ral law. The natural law’s negative precepts create a perpetual and immutable order
of justice. Insofar as they always obligate, those norms cannot change or be dispensed
with, since they prohibit actions whose lack of rectitude never changes.49 Even though
Suárez does not say it directly, it seems clear that he equates the natural law’s negative
precepts with moral absolutes, i.e., the moral norms that allow no exception. Of
course, some negative norms may be broken, such as the prohibition of disclosing
secrets, but Suárez does not go into them and only explains casually that they may
only be infringed for reasons like the defence of one’s country.50 Regarding moral
absolutes, he states that they „must necessarily be and have always been the same for
all conditions [of human nature]; for they prohibit actions that are intrinsically evil,
which are therefore evil for every such condition“.51 These principles do not admit
of a less strict interpretation and they always obligate prohibiting the evil, because it
is evil.52 Following St. Thomas, Suárez states that the moral species of acts are prior
to the judgment of the superior authority. The reason is that the natural law, which
defines the moral objects of acts,
„is primarily based, not upon the will that prohibits, but upon the nature of the inherently evil
act itself; and therefore interpretation of such prohibitions have place only in relation to sub-
ject-matter when an act, considered in the abstract, is evil not intrinsically but only in so far
as it is concerned with a given subject-matter, in a given way (as we have explained in connec-
tion with homicide, the taking of another person’s property, the retention of a deposit, and
other, similar acts)“.53

46
Rainer Specht, Über den Sinn des sogenannten Voluntarismus in der Gesetzestheorie des Suá-
rez, in: JCSW 7 f. (1966 f.), 247–256, here 247.
47
Suárez, De bonitate et malitia humanorum actuum (cf. n. 28), d. I, s. 2, n. 9.
48
Suárez, De bonitate et malitia humanorum actuum (cf. n. 28), d. I, s. 2, n. 10.
49
Suárez, De legibus ac Deo legislatore (cf. n. 12), l. III, c. 12, n. 18.
50
Suárez, De legibus ac Deo legislatore (cf. n. 12), l. II, c. 13, n. 5.
51
Suárez, De legibus ac Deo legislatore (cf. n. 12), l. II, c. 8, n. 9.
52
Suárez, De legibus ac Deo legislatore (cf. n. 12), l. II, c. 16, n. 11.
53
Suárez, De legibus ac Deo legislatore (cf. n. 12), l. II, c. 16, n. 13.

ZKG 129. Band 2018-1

 Is Francisco Suárez a voluntarist philosopher? 47

Suárez adds that the moral objects of acts are good not because they agree with the
law of the superior authority, but because, being good, they are in conformity with
the norm of authority. In the same sense, he teaches that „some acts of the will are
evil even before their prohibition […] and not even God can dispense from their
prohibition“.54 One cannot treat an evil act as licit by invoking the intent of the
legislator, the circumstances or its extrinsic ends.55 To illustrate this thesis, Suárez
gives the example of hating God: „hatred for God, when it is freely and humanly
desired, i.e., without ignorance, cannot not be evil“.56 This is evident and needs no
proof, Suárez explains, because „when this act is presented to the reason, it immedia-
tely abhors it. The same happens with this act: I want to act against my conscience,
against right reason, against the precept of my superior authority, which is always
unjust“.57 In this way, Suárez follows the Aristotelian and Thomistic explanation of
human action, according to which moral goodness is principally based on the good-
ness of the object or intentional species. Still, the goodness of the object is the neces-
sary, but not sufficient condition of the final goodness of the act. As it is well known,
a morally good action requires the corresponding subjective conditions, i.e. those
related to how the act of desire takes place. Hence, given that the subjective condi-
tions of the act of desire are not the cause of the goodness of the act, but are only
necessary conditions of an accidental or secondary character, and that the principal
criterion of the goodness of the action is based on the goodness of the moral object,
we can affirm that Suárez includes himself in the so-called intellectualist tradition of
justification58 which is the doctrine of Aristotle and his commentators.
The existence of objective and substantial evil acts relates to the problem of moral
goodness. According to the Disputationes metaphysicae, an action appropriate to na-
ture has integrity for this very reason.59 Finally, acts opposed to the good of nature
are unjust and may not be performed for any purpose or under any circumstances.
These are actions that even God must reject,60 such as not fulfilling what has been
promised, actions whose evil does not depend on an act of will, not even that of the
divine will. This is an objective evil.61 Given the intrinsic evil of certain acts, Ludger
Honnefelder, Pauline Westerman, Jean-François Courtine and Ernst-Wolfgang Bö-
ckenförde have had to recognize that the Suárezian interpretation of law, while it
accentuates the imperative force of the will, ultimately depends on the thesis that
moral obligations have a rational and objective foundation.62 As a result, if there exist

54
Suárez, De bonitate et malitia humanorum actuum (cf. n. 28), d. VII, s. 1, n. 6.
55
Suárez, De legibus ac Deo legislatore (cf. n. 12), l. II, c. 16, n. 13.
56
Suárez, De bonitate et malitia humanorum actuum (cf. n. 28), d. VII, s. 1, n. 7.
57
Suárez, De bonitate et malitia humanorum actuum (cf. n. 28), d. VII, s. 1, n. 7.
58
Vigo, Intellekt, Wunsch und Handlung (cf. n. 37), 244.
59
Suárez, Disputationes metaphysicae (cf. n. 18), d. X, s. 1, n. 12.
60
Suárez, De bonitate et malitia humanorum actuum (cf. n. 28), d. VII, s. 1, n. 7.
61
Suárez, De bonitate et malitia humanorum actuum (cf. n. 28), d. VII, s. 1, n. 8.
62
Ludger Honnefelder, Natural Law as the Principle of Practical Reason. Thomas Aquinas’ Legacy
in the Second Scholasticism, in: Alfredo Santiago Culleton/Roberto Hofmeister Pich (eds.), Right and
Nature in the First and Second Scholasticism, Turnhout 2014, 1–12, here 10; Pauline Westerman,
Suárez and the Formality of Law, in: Matthias Kaufmann/Robert Schnepf (eds.), Politische Metaphysik.
Die Entstehung moderner Rechtskonzeptionen in der Spanischen Scholastik, Frankfurt 2007, 227–
48 Sebastián Contreras Aguirre

objective evil acts, and if moral duties are rational and objective, it seems wrong to
insist that Suárez is a voluntarist.
It is interesting how Suárez links the existence of ex genere evil acts with the
normative work of God. Even though He is omnipotent and even though He acts ex
arbitrio suae voluntatis, He cannot fail to prohibit the intrinsic evil. Suárez under-
stands that not prohibiting those acts would be a providence foreign to divine wis-
dom.63 Therefore,
„assuming the existence of the will to create rational nature [in such fashion that it shall be
endowed] with sufficient knowledge for the doing of good and evil, and with sufficient divine
co-operation for the performance of both, God could not have refrained from willing to forbid
that a creature so endowed should commit acts intrinsically evil, nor could He have willed not
to prescribe [for performance by that creature] the necessary righteous acts“.64
As opposed to John Duns Scotus, for whom God is not limited by a prior rational
order – the ordinances of divine law are contingent, they are not related to any
previous rational order65 –, Suárez thinks that the divine will is, in a certain sense,
restricted by things: Divine activity cannot be contradictory.66 He hates whatever is
incompatible with things.67 Therefore, he concludes, God cannot act against His own
decrees. If He did so, there would be two contrary norms regarding the same things
and at the same time, which is a contradiction.68 Here the question arises of whether
God can abrogate the norms of natural law. In Disputationes metaphysicae, Suárez
states that God can modify the order of natural causes,69 and in Mysteria vitae Christi,
a text that includes parts of his commentaries on the third part of the Summa theolo-
giae, he notes that God can obviate (or leave ineffective) any obligation.70 This affir-
mation might lead us to think that God can, unforeseeably, suppress any moral norm.
Similarly, in De legibus ac Deo legislatore Suárez explains that since God is the first
rule of the good, even if He has prohibited something, He can do the contrary.71 So
then, given that God is the Lord of the universe and is above everything, neither His
will nor His intelligence can be regulated by a prior order.
The texts cited might make us think that, following Suárez, God governs the uni-
verse in an arbitrary and disordered manner. Nevertheless, Suárez thinks precisely
the opposite. In his opinion, in God there can be no tricks or inconsistencies. God’s
will too depends on the judgment of the intellect, even if that will does not love

237; Jean-François Courtine, La raison et l’empire de la loi, in: Adelino Cardoso/António Manuel
Martins/Leonel Ribeiro dos Santos (eds.), Francisco Suárez (1548–1617). Tradição e modernidade,
Lisbon 1999, 289–310; Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde, Geschichte der Rechts- und Staatsphilosophie.
Antike und Mittelalter, Tübingen 2006, 384 f.
63
Suárez, De legibus ac Deo legislatore (cf. n. 12), l. II, c. 6, n. 23.
64
Suárez, De legibus ac Deo legislatore (cf. n. 12), l. II, c. 6, n. 23.
65
John Duns Scotus, Ordinatio, Vatican 1963 (Opera omnia 6), l. I, d. 44, q. un.
66
Suárez, Disputationes metaphysicae (cf. n. 18), d. XXX, s. 17, n. 12.
67
Suárez, De legibus ac Deo legislatore (cf. n. 12), l. II, c. 2, n. 7.
68
Suárez, De legibus ac Deo legislatore (cf. n. 12), l. II, c. 2, n. 7.
69
Suárez, Disputationes metaphysicae (cf. n. 18), d. XXX, s. 17, n. 34.
70
Francisco Suárez, Mysteria vitae Christi, Paris 1860 (Opera omnia 19), d. 6, s. 2, n. 9, 106.
71
Suárez, De legibus ac Deo legislatore (cf. n. 12), l. II, c. 2, n. 6.

ZKG 129. Band 2018-1

 Is Francisco Suárez a voluntarist philosopher? 49

everything that the intellect presents to it.72 None of this means that God is not a
sovereign lord. It only denies that He is an arbitrary lord.73 The intrinsic evil of
certain acts springs from the immutability of essences. That which is evil of itself and
without any ordering to another thing cannot be made good by any end. In this way,
intrinsic or objective evil pre-exists the act of the divine will and any act of the
human legislative will. The immutability of essences, as well as the immutability of
the natural law, prevents moral norms from being dispensed with. Indeed, according
to Suárez, not even God can dispense with those norms – at least not using His
ordinary power –,74 because those principles create an order of justice that always
remains in force and is eternally obligatory. Thus,
„those commandments which involve an intrinsic principle of justice and obligation are not
liable to dispensation […] [because] a contradiction is involved in conceiving of [one and the
same] thing as being obligatory and as not being obligatory; and that which is subjected to
dispensation by that very fact ceases to be obligatory“.75
Nevertheless, when God acts beyond His ordinary power, He can change the natural
law via a change of matter,76 which is what happens in the so-called exceptive parado-
xes. For example, when God tells Abraham to kill Isaac, He does it as Lord of life
and death. If God had wanted to kill Isaac by Himself, He would not have needed
any dispensation, but could have done it in virtue of His absolute power as Lord of
life. Likewise, „God did not grant a dispensation to the Hebrews when He conceded
to them the spoils of the Egyptians; but rather, He either made a gift of these spoils,
acting as supreme Lord, or else, at least, paid them the wages of their labours, acting
as supreme Judge […] All similar cases, then, are to be interpreted in like manner“.77
In all these cases, what appears to be a dispensation is, in reality, a change in matter
or, technically speaking, a direct and extraordinary intervention of God in history.
This presupposes a revelation to the person who receives the dispensation or to a
third party, an intervention which cannot be understood without a special revelation
from God.78 It should be noted that this latter event is exceptional and occurs in very
specific situations, because, as Suárez states, this kind of dispensation or extraordi-
nary intervention by God is unwarranted when unnecessary.79
To sum up, Suárez denies that the will, be it divine or human, can change the
order of moral law. More emphatically than other Scholastics of his time, he argues
that desiring, while being free, is nonetheless ruled by the norm of right reason. In
the case of the legislative act, Suárez is even more clear: The law is not only will,

72
Suárez, Disputationes metaphysicae (cf. n. 18), d. XXX, s. 16, n. 37.
73
Javier Peña, Souveraineté de Dieu et pouvoir du prince chez Suárez, in: Guido Canziani/Miguel
A. Granada/Yves Charles Zarka (eds.), Potentia Dei. L’onnipotentia divina nel pensiero dei secoli XVI
e XVII, Milan 2000, 195–213, here 202.
74
Suárez, De legibus ac Deo legislatore (cf. n. 12), l. II, c. 15, n. 16; l. II, c. 16, n. 1; l. VI, c. 12,
n. 3; l. X, c. 6, n. 16; id., Defensio fidei, Paris 1858 (Opera omnia 24), l. III, c. 30, n. 7; l. IV, c. 3, n. 8.
75
Suárez, De legibus ac Deo legislatore (cf. n. 12), l. II, c. 15, n. 16.
76
Suárez, De legibus ac Deo legislatore (cf. n. 12), l. II, c. 15, n. 26.
77
Suárez, De legibus ac Deo legislatore (cf. n. 12), l. II, c. 15, n. 20.
78
Francisco Suárez, Conselhos e pareceres, vol. 2/1, Coimbra 1952, 92.
79
Suárez, Mysteria vitae Christi (cf. n. 70), d. 9, s. 1, n. 2, 137.
50 Sebastián Contreras Aguirre

although the will is the soul of the law.80 It is, so to speak, a reasoned will, a rectitude
in the desire, which is in accordance with natural reason.

III. Natural law in Suárez

According to Terence Irwin, natural law theory reached a higher sophistication with
Suárez’s approach.81 Indeed, he interprets the Thomist tradition of natural law in the
light of Scotist and Vitorian doctrines on the freedom and nature of man. He assumes
the Aristotelian thought of practical reason, which he relates to the statements of the
Fathers of the Church, medieval theologians and his contemporaries. He handles the
Scriptures and canon law. He is acquainted with the law in force, and even discusses
Niccolò Machiavelli’s interpretation of power. In a way, the Suárezian explanation of
natural law is stricter than that of other modern Thomists, such as Francisco de
Vitoria or Domingo de Soto, because these, unlike Suárez, speak of the universe’s
natural law or of the irrationals’ natural law. In Suárez’s view, when we speak of laws
of physical nature, the word „law“ is taken in a very broad and derivative sense,
because, strictly speaking, law exists only among the rational beings.82 Therefore,
although divine providence governs all things, the way it governs the natural world
may not be called law. Hence, in the Suárezian model, there is no community of law
between man and nature.83
In line with Aristotle, Suárez asserts that natural law is independent of opinion.
The principles of natural law are immutable and necessary,84 indelible,85 universal,86
„in force for Christians and infidels“.87 The authority of this law extends beyond
positive law, and it is like a property following from rational nature.88 The end of
natural law „is to direct man to do the things necessary to ‚achieve‘ natural honesty
and to avoid clumsy things“.89 Natural law is prior to positive law and it is its criterion

80
Suárez, De legibus ac Deo legislatore (cf. n. 12), l. III, c. 20, n. 3.
81
Terence Irwin, The Development of Ethics. A Historical and Critical Study vol. 2. From Suarez
to Rousseau, Oxford 2011, 1. Irwin asserts that Suárez is more of a theorist of natural law than Thomas
Aquinas (67).
82
Suárez, De legibus ac Deo legislatore (cf. n. 12), l. I, c. 3, n. 2; id., De iustitia dei, Paris 1858
(Opera omnia 11), s. 3, n. 35; id., De opere sex dierum, Paris 1856 (Opera omnia 3), l. III, c. 16, n. 6.
83
Jerome Schneewind, The Invention of Autonomy. A History of Modern Moral Philosophy, Cam-
bridge 1998, 59.
84
Suárez, De legibus ac Deo legislatore (cf. n. 12), l. II, c. 13, n. 2; l. II, c. 14, n. 8; l. VIII, c. 6,
n. 4.
85
Suárez, De legibus ac Deo legislatore (cf. n. 12), l. II, c. 13, n. 3; l. II, c. 15, n. 11.
86
Suárez, De legibus ac Deo legislatore (cf. n. 12), l. II, c. 8, n. 5; l. II, c. 13, n. 10; l. X, c. 3, n. 11.
87
Francisco Suárez, De bello, Stuttgart 2013, s. 2, n. 4.
88
Suárez, De legibus ac Deo legislatore (cf. n. 12), l. II, c. 8, n. 5; l. II, c. 8, n. 8; l. II, c. 13, n. 2.
Unlike positive law, natural law has a normative reason for its validity, which is founded on the first
principles known by the practical intellect. As Matthias Lutz-Bachmann writes, Suárez justifies the
existence of particular legal commands and prohibitions on the ground of these principles. Matthias
Lutz-Bachmann, Die Normativität des Völkerrechts. Zum Begriff des ius gentium bei Francisco Suárez
im Vergleich mit Thomas von Aquin, in: Alexander Fidora/Matthias Lutz-Bachmann/Andreas Wagner
(eds.), Lex und Ius, Stuttgart 2010, 465–485, here 467.
89
Francisco Suárez, Quaestio De legibus, manuscript 3856, Lisbon, d. III, q. 1 (De legibus IV, CHP).

ZKG 129. Band 2018-1

 Is Francisco Suárez a voluntarist philosopher? 51

of rightness. It cannot be conceived as a kind of universal positive law, as Marsilius

of Padua did, because it does not change with time, and no reason can repeal it.
Hence, Suárez denies that positive law can modify natural law, in contrast to St.
Thomas. Human law may interpret it, but, in the strictest sense, it cannot change it.
Therefore, if natural law has priority over positive law, and if it is not subject to its
contingency, there is no reason to define Suárez’s model as voluntarist. Irwin upholds
this same opinion.90
In the Quaestio De legibus, a manuscript containing his Roman lectures on the
treatise of law, Suárez notes that this norm is called natural, because „the same
natural reason teaches man certain bad and forbidden things, and also certain good
things, such that it is wrong to omit them“.91 No special revelation is necessary, and
every man, as long as he has use of reason, may know its precepts, at least the most
universal. In regard to the spontaneity (naturalness) of knowing moral principles,
Franco Volpi argues that the Suárezian natural law is innate.92 The passages in which
Suárez leans towards an innate reading of natural law must be understood as refer-
ring to the light of the agent intellect, which is innate and a participation of the
divine intellect by our reason. If moral principles were innate, the Suárezian assertion
that there is no intellectual knowledge without experience would lack sense.93
Knowledge of all precepts of natural law requires some degree of experience. For
example, nobody can learn the principle that defines friendship as a human good
without having experienced true friends. Natural law is grounded only in the light
of reason. That is why Norbert Brieskorn asserts Suárez does not justify theologically
his moral theory. Anybody, including those who have not thought of the relation
this law has with God, may know it.94 Nevertheless, because the happiness of man
is above nature, Suárez formulates his theory of justice through the exitus-reditus
scheme: Happiness consists in God and in the objects that dispose us towards Him.95
Man, although living on the natural level, has been created for the supernatural
life.96 Notwithstanding Suárez deems that anthropology does not directly stem from
theology, he thinks that the ends of the person surpass the immanent reality.97 For
this reason, whoever perceives the principles of natural law can discover the divine
origin of these mandates, although this is not a requirement to perceive the honesty,

90
Irwin, The Development of Ethics vol. 2 (cf. n. 81), 28–69.
91
Suárez, Quaestio De legibus (cf. n. 89), d. III, q. 1.
92
Franco Volpi, Großes Werklexikon der Philosophie, Stuttgart 1999, 1460.
93
Suárez, Disputationes metaphysicae (cf. n. 18), d. I, s. 6, nn. 24 f.
94
Norbert Brieskorn, Lex und ius bei Francisco Suárez, in: Fidora/Lutz-Bachmann/Wagner, Lex
und Ius (cf. n. 88), 429–463, here 461; Norbert Brieskorn, Wofür benötigen wir überhaupt ein Natur-
recht? Sinn und Notwendigkeit des Naturrechts aus philosophischer und theologischer Sicht, in: Bern-
hard Vogel/Wilfried Härle (eds.), Vom Rechte, das mit uns geboren ist. Aktuelle Probleme des Natur-
rechts, Freiburg 2007, 97–126, here 109.
95
Tobias Schaffner, Is Francisco Suárez a Natural Law Ethicist?, in: Kirstin Bunge et al., The
Concept of Law (cf. n. 37), 150–171, here 159.
96
Costantino Esposito, La fondazione dei diritti umani in Francisco Suárez, in: Civiltà del Mediter-
raneo 8 f. (2005 f.), 167–202, here 196.
97
Jean-Paul Coujou, Droit, anthropologie & politique chez Suárez, Perpignan 2012, 320.
52 Sebastián Contreras Aguirre

justice or rationality of those principles.98 Concerning the foundation of natural law

in the nature of man, Suárez adopts a middle course he attributes to Thomas Aquinas
over against voluntarists and naturalists. Rational nature is a measure of the goodness
of human acts, it is a rule, but it is not natural law.99 Natural law is a product of
practical reason. Although the happiness of man is founded on nature, nature is not
a principle of morality. We may express it by saying that nature is the occasion and
premise of the natural law,100 but not natural law itself.101 In spite of drawing this
distinction between the nature of man and natural law, John Finnis, Martin Rhonhei-
mer, Germain Grisez and William E. May102 criticize Suárez for transforming the
theory of natural law into an essentialist and deductive ethic (although, ironically,
just like Suárez, they note the selfsame distinction between natural law and its foun-
dation in nature). Neither Suárez nor his contemporary critics think that moral
obligations are syllogistically derived from the nature of man. Without the mediation
of practical reason there is no law, natural law or ethical knowledge. Suárez wants
to emphasize that natural law is a divine law.103 This is why he opposes Gabriel
Vázquez’s argument about natural law, which makes the appeal to the legislative
power of God superfluous.104 Vázquez posits that acts contrary to the natural law
would be bad even before its prohibition by God, that is, even if God did not exist.
This hypothesis, known as the doctrine of the non-existent God, was defended by

98
Brieskorn, Lex und ius bei Francisco Suárez (cf. n. 94), 461.
99
Suárez, De legibus ac Deo legislatore (cf. n. 12), l. II, c. 6, n. 5.
100
Luis Recaséns Siches, La filosofía del derecho de Francisco Suárez, Madrid 1927, 104; Mauricio
Beuchot, La ley natural en Suárez, in: Cardoso/Martins/dos Santos, Francisco Suárez (cf. n. 62), 279–
288, here 285.
101
Suárez, De legibus ac Deo legislatore (cf. n. 12), l. II, c. 5, n. 5.
102
John Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights, Oxford 2011, 45; id., Fundamentals of Ethics,
Washington DC 1983, 134 f.; Martin Rhonheimer, Natural Law and Practical Reason. A Thomist View
of Moral Autonomy, New York 2000, 43; id., The Perspective of Morality. Philosophical Foundations
of Thomistic Virtue Ethics, Washington DC 2011, 330; Germain Grisez, The First Principle of Practical
Reason. A Commentary on the Summa theologiae, 1–2, Question 94, Article 2, in: Natural Law Forum
10 (1965), 168–201, here 187; id., Christian Moral Principles, Illinois 1997, 112; William E. May, The
Natural Law Doctrine of Francis Suarez, in: NSchol 58 (1984), 409–423, here 420.
103
Suárez, De legibus ac Deo legislatore (cf. n. 12), l. I, c. 3, n. 9; l. I, c. 3, n. 11; l. II, c. 6, n. 2;
l. II, c. 6, n. 13; l. II, c. 7, n. 1; l. II, c. 9, n. 2; l. II, c. 14, n. 8; l. IV, c. 1, n. 9; id., Quaestio De legibus
(cf. n. 89), d. III, proemium; id., Conselhos e pareceres, vol. 1, Coimbra 1948, 340; id., Defensio fidei
(cf. n. 74), l. III, c. 1, n. 7. Natural law is divine law, but it is not a divine positive law through which
God commands indifferent matters. As Anselm Spindler explains it, when God dictates natural law,
he is bound to the intrinsic moral qualities of certain actions that exist before and independently of
the acts of his will. Anselm Spindler, Law, Natural Law, and the Foundation of Morality in Francisco
de Vitoria and Francisco Suárez, in: Kirstin Bunge et al., The Concept of Law (cf. n. 37), 172–197,
here 190; Anselm Spindler, Die Theorie des natürlichen Gesetzes bei Francisco de Vitoria, Stuttgart
2015, 16.
104
„The existence of natural law or just […] does not depend on any will, even that of God […]
Indeed […] there are many things bad on themselves, so that their evil precedes the intellectual
judgement […] These things aren’t bad because they are deemed so by God. On the contrary, they
are judged bad because there are themselves bad. Therefore, before any act of the will and command
of God and, in fact, before any judgement, there are some good and bad things in themselves“. Gabriel
Vázquez, Commentariorum ac disputationum in primam secundae S. Thomae, vol. 2, Alcalá 1605,
d. 150, c. 3, n. 22.

ZKG 129. Band 2018-1

 Is Francisco Suárez a voluntarist philosopher? 53

some authors of the 14th century, such as Gregory of Rimini, and it exerted some
influence on Bartolomé de Medina, a Dominican who states that even if God did
not exist evil acts would be sinful.105
In the opinion of Vázquez, God is the first and eternal origin of nature, but not
of moral prohibition.106 Before any act of the divine will, there is a rule valid at all
times: rational nature insofar as it does not imply contradiction.107 Hence, it is affir-
med that Vázquez does not take into account the divine preceptive will (as stated by
Vázquez, the moral order depends on human nature as a rational and biological
unit).108 On the contrary, Suárez, like most modern Thomists, follows a rather Augus-
tinian interpretation, according to which every kind of fault comes from the fact that
our will does not obey the will of God.109
Suárez contends that the naturalist – or rationalist – denies God’s authorship of
natural law. For the same reason, Suárez argues that, in the naturalist model, the
violation of natural law does not involve the violation of a divine mandate. Suárez,
however, misses the premise of this argument. The naturalist does not deny that God
is the author of natural law. He only thinks it to be unnecessary to explain in natural
law that God is the author of that law. Even when the divine command establishing
natural principles confirms our decision to act in one way or another, this mandate
is not the only reason to respect natural principles. For example, if I know that for
God homicide is an evil act, I will have an additional reason to believe that commit-
ting murder is wrong. However, the moral basis of that act remains the same: its
intrinsic evil.110 Suárez also opposes the Ockhamist version of natural law. For Wil-
liam of Ockham, morality amounts to malum quia volitum, i.e., Ockham thinks that
there are no bad deeds if God does not forbid them. However, although Suárez’s
definition of law as an act of will has Ockhamist influences, he is not an Ockhamist,
because Suárez, unlike the medieval theologian, thinks that the superior’s will is not
sufficient for a rule to be fair: If the norm does not pass the examination of rationa-
lity, then it may not compel. It is not even accidentally called law. Ockham continues
to say that „God may command the created will to hate him“.111 For an author like
Suárez, that ordering is irrational and meaningless.

105
Bartolomé de Medina, Expositio in primam secundae doctoris D. Thomae Aquinatis, Salmanticae
1578, q. 19, a. 4.
106
Javier Hervada, The Old and the New in the Hypothesis Etiamsi daremus of Grotius, in: Groti-
ana 4 (1983), 3–20, here 17.
107
Vázquez, Commentariorum ac disputationum in primam secundae S. Thomae vol. 2 (cf. n. 104),
d. 150, c. 3, n. 22. In my reading of Vazquez, God is determined by natural law and not inversely.
Suárez, on the contrary, posits that the natural principles are those that accommodate themselves to
the divine will. Now, because the divine will cannot command anything or arbitrarily, we may say, with
Hans Welzel, that God is determined by things. Hans Welzel, Naturrecht und materiale Gerechtigkeit,
Göttingen 1955, 98.
108
Heinrich Rommen, Die Staatslehre des Franz Suarez, Munich 1926, 66; Juan Cruz, Fragilidad
humana y ley natural. Cuestiones disputadas en el Siglo de Oro, Pamplona 2009, 58.
109
Jacob Schmutz, Was Duns Scotus a Voluntarist? Juan Caramuel Lobkowitz against the Bratislava
Franciscans, in: Filosofický časopis. Special issue (2016), 147–184, here 159.
110
Irwin, The Development of Ethics vol. 2 (cf. n. 81), 22–25.
111
William of Ockham, Quaestiones in librum quartum Sententiarum, q. 16, OTh VII, 352. Now,
Ockham himself limits his voluntarism. For instance, in Quaestiones variae (q. 6, a. 4, OTh VIII, 395)
54 Sebastián Contreras Aguirre

The naturalist interpretation regards natural law as a mere indication of human

good. In this case, the act of authority is of no importance. At its antipodes, the
voluntarist interpretation turns natural law into a pure precept, which does not take
into account the order of rationality existing in nature. In Suárez’s opinion, neither
of these extremes is true, although they have some truth. The natural law is an
indication in the manner of naturalism, and a precept in the way of voluntarism.
Natural law discovers human good and imposes it. It is based on an order of rationa-
lity independent of the divine mandate, but it is only obligatory because it is the
mandate of a superior.112 Consequently, the middle way adopted by Suárez takes
elements of naturalism and voluntarism. From naturalism it assumes the existence of
an objective morality, independent of the judgment of authority; from voluntarism it
takes the need to command efficaciously, defining natural law as a precept of God.
Acts of knowledge lacking the imperium of the divine will are neither law nor natural
right. Knowledge of essences does not create any kind of obligations. It is only when
the act of will adds the command that moral duty arises. Because in Suárez’s view
law fundamentally consists in command, the active demand of the will plays a funda-
mental role in his philosophical system, a demand that, nonetheless, always depends
on a corrective act of the reason. Thus, the divine prescriptive will without rationality,
of itself, cannot become a sufficient cause for the goodness and justice of those acts
that respect the natural law. Although it is true that Suárez’s theory of law emphasizes
the prescriptive aspect of law, he rejects the autonomy of the legislative will and
moral subjectivism, which are distinctive elements of the voluntarist understanding
of justice. He neither reduces all law to positive law nor to the formalism usually
attributed to him by Pauline Westerman, William Daniel and John Finnis.113
In sum, the divine preceptive will is not the total reason for the goodness or malice
of human acts. In actions themselves there is some intrinsic honesty or malice, to
which is added the preceptive or prohibitive will of God. Hence, to what extent the
obligation of natural law comes from the divine will, that will presupposes an objec-
tive judgment on the evil of lying, murder, robbery, adultery, and so on. Yet, because
the act of knowledge alone does not create a prohibition or an obligation of precept,
the effective will to prohibit what is evil ex genere is added.114

IV. Conclusion

Understanding the law as an act of will does not mean undermining its definition as
a precept of practical reason. Suárez, like Thomas Aquinas, holds that the appetite
and the intelligence intervene together in the formation of the law. The rational

he says that „no act is really virtuous when the will does not want the ruling of right reason for being
the ruling of right reason“. Opera philosophica et theologica, New York 1967–1986.
112
The doctrine of the superior is a common thesis among Jesuits of early Modernity. Aside from
Suárez, Gabriel Vázquez and Gregorio de Valencia uphold it, to name some.
113
Pauline Westerman, The Disintegration of Natural Law Theory, Leiden 1998, 77–128; William
Daniel, The Purely Penal Law Theory in the Spanish Theologians from Vitoria to Suárez, Rome 1968,
203–205; Finnis, Natural Law and Natural Rights (cf. n. 102), 330.
114
Suárez, De legibus ac Deo legislatore (cf. n. 12), l. II, c. 6, n. 13.

ZKG 129. Band 2018-1

 Is Francisco Suárez a voluntarist philosopher? 55

appetite provides the motive force, and the intelligence gives the directive force. The
accent on the will does not even place Suárez outside the tradition of Thomistic
philosophy. What Suárez does is define the law in terms of the efficient cause, some-
thing that had not been done before, but which does not contradict the basic idea of
the Thomistic theory of law: that the law consists in an act of rational ordination.
Suárez also thinks that the rationality of law is its formal cause. Whatever is not in
conformity with the norm of reason, that is, with the natural law, is unjust and is
only accidentally called law. A law without a reasonable cause cannot count as a
principle of conduct. Suárez thinks that this does not just apply to the human legisla-
tor. The divine legislator, eternal law, also cannot command what is irrational. Once
again, the example of hating God serves as illustration. The will, divine or human,
depends on the ordination of practical reason. Even though the will remains free
when faced with the object proposed by the intelligence, it cannot operate without
the previous motion of the reason: The will only desires what the intelligence has
presented as being good. Perhaps the best proof of the non-voluntarism of Suárez is
his understanding of the acts that are evil in se. No reason allows us to carry out
these acts. They cannot be justified by circumstances or extrinsic ends. Even more,
God, when confronted by these acts, can do nothing other than prohibit them. This
is a strong thesis of the Suárezian model of justifying the law, since Suárez suggests
that even God is, in some way, limited by acts that are intrinsically evil.
In sum, his understanding of natural law, his doctrine of the superiority of practi-
cal reason and his explanation of acts that are evil in se, show that Suárez always
keeps himself within the Thomistic and Scholastic tradition of law. Therefore, it is
hard to interpret him as being a voluntarist author. As Rainer Specht notes,
„even though in the texts the philosophy of Suárez is labeled as voluntarist, this doesn’t seem
particularly reasonable. It is a vague and risky classification, because the same thing could be
said of Ockham and Schopenhauer, and even of Genghis Khan, which, without a doubt, invol-
ves a number of dangerous and arbitrary affirmations“.115

Abstract

Manche Leserinnen und Leser der Schriften des Francisco Suarez halten es für selbstverständlich,
dass sie einen naturrechtlichen Voluntarismus repräsentieren. So wird behauptet, er habe mit der
scholastischen Tradition gebrochen, als er das Gesetz als einen Befehl des Willens definierte. Diese
Ansicht ergibt sich aber aus einer zu partiellen Lektüre von Suárez’ Philosophie. Wenn die Aussa-
gen in De legibus ac Deo legislatore im Lichte von De anima, De fine hominis und De bonitate et
malitia humanorum actuum gedeutet werden, wird deutlich, dass Suárez an die scholastische Tra-
dition von Thomas von Aquin, Francisco de Vitoria und Domingo de Soto anschließt. Insbeson-
dere behauptet er, dass das Handeln des Willens vom Urteil der Vernunft abhängt und dass das
Gesetz, obwohl es ein Reich des Willens ist, ungerecht ist, wenn es etwas befiehlt, das der natürli-
chen Vernunft widerspricht. Der Aufsatz versucht zu zeigen, dass Suárez’ Theorie des Rechts nicht
voluntaristisch ist und dass seine Haltung in den Grundlagen mit der allgemeinen thomistischen
Philosophie des Gesetzes übereinstimmt.

115
Specht, Über den Sinn des sogenannten Voluntarismus (cf. n. 46), 249 f.