Suárez and Some Baroque Scotists on the Perceptual Self-Awareness

Abstract

In this article I deal with the topic of perceptual self-awareness, focusing on whether a plausible account of sensory self-perception having exterior sensations as its objects requires sensible species representing these acts. I first introduce Aristotle’s two distinct views from On the Soul and On Sleep and Waking as defining the scholastic status quaestionis, then bring in Francisco Suárez’s (1548–1617), Bartholomeo Mastri’s (1602–1673) and Bonaventura Belluto’s (1600–1676), and Hugh McCaghwell’s (1571–1626) accounts. I show, first, that Suárez’s view, which cannot be substantiated by Scotus’s littera, is rejected by Mastri/Belluto and by McCaghwell in one of his conclusions. Second, I argue that McCaghwell’s second tenet is to be assessed as Suarezian. This shows that Suárez’s philosophy of perception was positively received also by seventeenth-century Scotists.