The beings of reason in Suarez. A baroque conception of the reality

Abstract

In this paper I shall show the relevant role which the beings of reason play in Suarez’s philosophy, namely, the role of being the guarantee of the scientific validity. For this thesis it is basic to discover the difference between the chimera and other beings of reason: the negation, the relation of reason and the privation. In this way, Suarez sets the basis of the properly baroque way of understanding the world as an extra-mental reality which is only cognoscible through the artful device of the being of reason. Suarez conceives the science from the Aristotelean perspective, that is why he does not appreciate the mathematical beings of reason. Nevertheless, we do believe that the notion of being of reason is helpful in the comprehension of the singularity of the baroque metaphysics in comparison to the posterior ontologism. We enter, therefore, in discussion with the marked tendency to interpret the metaphysics of Suarez in an ontological way.