Francisco Suárez

FRANCISCO SU? REZ (1548-1617)

"Happiness does not consist of many things possessed

but how to enjoy them, even less. "

Francisco Suárez

THE VOICE OF M? S MODERN scholics? STIC

Suarez was the most modern of the scholastics and the most modern scholastic. Heir of the whole school, learned to take her more advanced stage of maturity, after which he soon produced the decline of the ancient ancestral tradition. But the Doctor eximius projection was strong and durable. In Catholic circles, had many disciples and was continued by a host of teachers. For Protestants, has long been a model. The great Andalusian philosopher is present even within the new philosophy of the Baroque period and after the Enlightenment. His thinking has an important place in Spanish thought and is a capital shift in the evolution of global speculation.

Francisco Suárez was born in Grenada on January 5, 1548. Was soon tonsured, a student at Medina del Campo and then in Salamanca, where he took courses Mancio of Corpus Christi, Juan de Guevara and Enrique Henriquez, in 1564 entered the Society of Jesus where he received the teachings of Andrew Martinez. Shortly thereafter he was professor at Segovia, Salamanca, Valladolid, and Alcala. Called to Rome and 1580, remained there for five years, very close to Bellarmine and Pope. Back in Spain, taught at Alcala, where his first books he behaved difficulties by Dominicans censors. In 1593, he rejoined Salamanca, where he taught with increasing brightness, at the Jesuit college of Aspirancy wrote in 1597, his masterpiece, the disputed metaphysicae.

In the same year, appointed professor of the chair of Primo de Coimbra at the request of Philip II, implanted there for a long time thinking Salamanca until 1615 that earned her retirement, going to Lisbon, two years before his death in that city on September 25, 1617. Disputes had to hold because of his fame did not alter his serenity never fund, despite its touchy and combative. For his immense culture and timeliness of doctrine, and also by its religious fervor, Suarez was named Doctor eximius et pius, the most eminent representative of scholasticism baroque.

Written at a time against Protestantism, which defended the divine right of kings, and against all more or less cynical naturalist, De legibus first examine the law in general, and then study the different kinds of laws and issues they arise.

The analysis of the principle of sovereignty is far more advanced than the authors who preceded him. In the work of Suarez, the power is given by God for all the political community, not just this or that person, against Caesar and the lawyers, Machiavellianism and Lutheranism, Suarez elaborates, in short, the theory of democracy , which delves deeper into his Defensor fidei. The notion of covenant or social contract already appeared in the Doctor eximius: the political community is constituted by a first entente between individuals or families may delegate this power to a group or one person, through a second covenant, which God leaves our discretion. As a rule, democracy, ie the direct rule of the people by the people, will be the most natural form of government, and does not require a particular institution, it is consistent with the spontaneity of our being.

Moreover, De legibus methodically devoted to establish international law. In it the human race is seen as something that is not only specific unit, but also moral and political. Once there, the evangelical precept of universal love our neighbor without distinction of race or nation, invites us to consider humanity as one body. What's more, but each state is a perfect community and self-sufficient, to some extent, need for other states, either to satisfy this or that shortcoming, and to increase their chances. Thus, each national group is part of the international community, which is higher than that, natural and morally.

From all which it follows that international law is indispensable to rule this universal society. This right has two sources in the first place, natural law, born of reason, then the law of nations, arising from local and particular uses of each nation, who come to the right will complete natural at innumerable points.

Instead of rejecting Suarez, like most humans, the scholastic tradition of four centuries and discusses the weighing point by point, carefully separating the valid elements of date. And as the Andalusian philosopher said: "The political community is free of natural right and is not subject to any man outside, but is itself a whole has the political power that is democratic until you change it."

Francisco Arias Solis

The future is won, gaining freedom.

Of Internet Portal for Peace and Freedom and Free Forum.

URL: http://www.internautasporlapaz.org