The Spanish Jesuit Francisco Suarez (1548B1617) was an eminent Catholicphilosopher-theologian whose Disputationes Metaphysicae were first published in Spain in 1597 and came to be widely studied throughout Europe during the seventeenth century. The Disputationes Metaphysicae not only constituted the high point of sixteenth-century scholastic metaphysics but exercised a great influence on early modern philosophers such as Descartes, Malebranche, and Leibniz. This is the first time that Disputations 20B22 have been translated into English. These disputations, which deal with the divine actions of creation, conservation, and concurrence, form the last half of Suarez's treatment of efficient causality. The present work completes thus Freddoso's translation of Suarez's full account of efficient causality in the Disputationes Metaphysicae, the first half of which (Disputations 17B19) appeared from Yale University Press in 1994. In Disputations 20B22 Suarez takes up a series of intriguing metaphysical questions, including: Are creation ex nihilo and divine conservation so much as metaphysically possible? Assuming that they are, what sort of agent and what sort of power do they require? How does creation ex nihilo differ from >ordinary= causal action? How does creation differ from conservation? Can a single entity be created from eternity, or more than once? Can the power to create be conferred on a creature? Can an agent that creates use other things as instruments in the act of creation? Are there good reasons to believe that, beyond creation and conservation, God concurs as an immediate cause in every action of every creature? What is the nature of this concurrence? Is it compatible with the autonomy of created agents, especially free agents? In his lengthy introduction, Freddoso situates the Disputationes Metaphysicae within their proper intellectual context, provides a basic introduction to scholastic ontology and treatments of efficient causality, and traces the main lines of argument proposed by Suarez in Disputations 20B22.
AFreddoso is medieval philosophy's best and most prolific translator. Here, as in his earlier works, the English is both clear and faithful to the original. The translation is literal enough to satisfy philosophers, but not so ploddingly literal as to wear down the reader. Frequent footnotes help make sense of obscure references and tangled arguments. In comparing forty pages of the translation with the original Latin I was unable to find a single significant mistake, omission, or even questionable rendering B The Philosophical Review A[This serves] to indicate the brilliance of the translators at understanding the intricacies and subtleties of medieval scholastic Latin, and their sensitivity to modern readers= needs and problems. B The Thomist AA brilliant piece of scholarship. . . . Freddoso's introduction and notes are a tour de force. B Philosophical Review Freddoso's translation and introduction are, quite simply, splendid pieces of work. B International Philosophical Quarterly
