Abstract
Suárez pursues a realist strategy when explaining habits: they are real qualities of the soul, acting as real causes and producing real activities. This chapter analyzes this thesis, examining it within the framework of Suárez’s metaphysics of the soul. It looks at the way he explains the necessity of habits, their generation, their co-operation with faculties, and their gradual changes. It emphasizes that habits are not simply “occult qualities,” as many early modern critics thought, but entities that play an important role. They are powers that make it possible to produce a wide range of activities in a quick and effortless way. Suárez’s realist theory of habits aims at explaining how they produce activities and why they must be accepted as parts of a complex network of psychic powers. A theory dispensing with habits would simply accept the existence of some activities as a brute fact.
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Notes
- 1.
Habits belong to the first of four species of qualities; see Aristotle, Cat. 8, 8b27–9a12.
- 2.
Hobbes , Leviathan, book 4, ch. 46 (ed. Tuck, 468).
- 3.
On this line of critique, see Nadler (1998, 518–522). Note that anti-Aristotelians did not reject all occult qualities. They accepted some (e.g., magnetic forces) as real and efficacious, but insisted that they should not be categorized as Aristotelian qualities; see Hutchison (1982) and Leduc (2014).
- 4.
- 5.
I confine myself to introducing the elements that are relevant for an understanding of his theory of habits. For a comprehensive picture, see Knuuttila (2015).
- 6.
See Suárez, De anima, disp. 2, q. 5 (ed. Castellote, 1: 322–330). Suárez openly attacks Ockhamists who adopt the pluralist model. For a detailed account, see Des Chene (2000, 161–169).
- 7.
See Suárez, De anima, disp. 3, q. 3 (ed. Castellote, 2: 124–125). For a discussion of this thesis, see Perler (2015, 124–134).
- 8.
Suárez, Disputationes metaphysicae (= DM) 44.1.6 (the first number refers to the disputation, the second to the section, the third to the paragraph): “est enim qualitas quaedam permanens, et de se stabilis in subjecto, per se primo ordinata ad operationem, non tribuens primam facultatem operandi, sed adiuvans et facilitans illam.” See also DM 42.3.4.
- 9.
See Suárez, DM 44.3.3–5. Quoting Thomas Aquinas , Suárez concedes that such a custom can be called a habit in some sense, but he hastens to add that it is not a habit in the real and full sense. DM 44.3.5: “Et addere etiam possumus hanc ipsam imperfectam habilitatem vel consuetudinem, non habere proprie in eis locum, nisi quatenus aliquot modo sunt capacia disciplinae per subordinationem ad rationem humanam…”
- 10.
To be sure, this custom has real existence and cannot be reduced to anything else. But it is something that naturally and inevitably comes into existence when a brute animal repeatedly uses a natural faculty. And it naturally determines an animal to produce a certain activity, for instance an act of running away from the wolf. It is therefore only some kind of internal mechanism that results from repeated activity and natural instinct . See DM 44.3.5.
- 11.
See Suárez, DM 44.4.3.
- 12.
Suárez makes this point by saying that the concepts (or “intelligible species”) are necessary but not sufficient for a judgement ; see DM 44.4.3.
- 13.
Suárez, DM 44.4.8: “… quamvis intellectus sit potentia naturaliter agens, ex parte tamen objectorum, et mediorum, quibus utitur ad ferendum de rebus judicium, saepe non satis determinari, neque necessitari; et tunc esse utilem habitum ad inclinandum intellectum in unam partem potius quam in aliam.”
- 14.
Note, however, that he does not subscribe to this principle in every context. In his theory of the will he holds a libertarian position. For a detailed analysis, see Penner (2013).
- 15.
To be precise, there are some parts of the sensory faculty that can also have habits. Suárez points out that the cogitative power, which is the human equivalent to the estimative power in non-rational animals , belongs to the sensory faculty and can nevertheless have habits. It is a quasi-intellectual power that produces thoughts of individual things without using general concepts . It can have habits for the same reason as the intellect, namely, because it is not determined to produce one and only one thought in a given situation. See Suárez, DM 44.3.7: “Ratio est, quia cogitativa hominis non est ita simpliciter determinata ad unum, sicut phantasia bruti; nam potest aliquo modo ex imperio rationis moveri et determinari ad operandum.”
- 16.
Suárez, DM 44.6.13: “At vero subintelligendo hunc modum subordinationis, vere dici potest, potentiam et habitum concurrere ut principia partialia, quia quando actio ab eis procedit, etiamsi tota fiat a singulis, a neutra tamen fit totaliter, quia ita fit ab una, ut omnino necessario pendeat ab alia, et converso.”
- 17.
See Suárez, DM 44.5.7. Suárez points out that there are four ways of supporting the intellect: (i) by removing obstacles that might prevent it from becoming active, (ii) by making its object better disposed to be grasped by the intellect, (iii) by increasing its power, and (iv) by working with it and thereby making it stronger. It is (iv) that is relevant here, for the habit literally works together with the intellect; it is an additional power that strengthens the intellect.
- 18.
See Suárez, DM 44.8.13.
- 19.
Suárez emphasizes that intellectual acts are immanent acts, that is, acts that do not produce any external effect, but this does not prevent them from being active and productive; see DM 18.4.5. All acts, including immanent ones, are active and productive entities .
- 20.
See Suárez, DM 44.9.9.
- 21.
For a systematic analysis of this problem, see Williamson (1994).
- 22.
Suárez, DM 44.9.12: “haec dispositio ad habitum, quae per primum actum inchoatur, et per subsequentes perficitur, non essentialiter aut realiter distincta est ab ipso habitu: non tamen habet statum habitus, donec ita sit radicata, ut difficulter amoveri possit, et facilitatem simpliciter tribuat in operando. Et hoc sensu verum est habitum in esse habitus non generari nisi per plures actus.”
- 23.
See Suárez, DM 18.2.1. Suárez is in agreement with Thomas Aquinas , who makes the same point in Summa theologiae I–II, q. 49, art. 2, corp.
- 24.
On this explanatory strategy, see the pioneering work by Maier (1968). For a concise account of different theories of intension and remission that were elaborated in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth century, see Adams (1987, 697–740), and more recently Löwe (2014). See also the contribution by Monika Michałowska in this volume, p. 349–354.
- 25.
See Suárez, DM 44.10.2.
- 26.
On the decrease and hence “remission” of a habit, see Suárez, DM 44.12.2.
- 27.
See Suárez, DM 44.10.5.
- 28.
See Suárez, DM 44.10.2 and 44.11.2–4.
- 29.
Suárez, DM 44.11.27: “unus et idem simplex habitus potest per suam entitatem simplicem ad varia objecta partialia virtualiter extendi, et plures actus afficere, si vel omnino sint similes in ratione formali objecti, quamvis in materiali differant, vel ita sint inter se connexi, ut unus in alio virtualiter contineatur.”
- 30.
Suárez, DM 44.11.30: “semper id, quod est formale, est quod dat speciem; materiale autem est quasi per accidens, vel individuale respectu talis actus.”
- 31.
See Suárez, DM 44.11.55.
- 32.
Suárez, DM 44.11.62: “connexio vel coordinatio inter qualitates illas simplices.”
- 33.
This problem became pressing in the fourteenth century with Ockham’s denial that it is a single habit that creates unity, and it was eagerly discussed by later authors. On Ockham’s position, see Pelletier (2013, 26–38); on later discussions, see Biard (2012, 39–52). See also the contributions by Jenny Pelletier and Pascale Bermon in this volume, p. 285–299 and p. 301–319.
- 34.
With this explanation, Suárez wants to avoid two extreme positions, namely the unitarian position that posits a single habit for a given science, and the pluralist position that refers to a loose assemblage of habits. The first position cannot explain why there can be different types of act (a single habit can only generate a single type of act); the second cannot give an account of the connection between habits (a mere assemblage of habits does not create any unity). See DM 44.11.57–63.
- 35.
See note 2 above. To be sure, Hobbes did not explicitly mention Suárez as his target. He launched a general attack on the scholastics, criticizing their account of virtues, scientific habits and other types of habits. But Suárez was certainly meant to be criticized, for he was a main representative of the scholastic tradition.
- 36.
Suárez explains the grasping of one’s own intellectual acts by referring to a process of reflection. For a detailed account, see Perler (2014).
- 37.
See Suárez, De anima, disp. 1, q. 1 (ed. Castellote, 1: 68).
- 38.
He emphasizes that there is a single soul and hence a single power station for all these entities . Consequently, all the work done by these entities must be related to this basic power station. See Suárez, De anima, disp. 2, q. 5 (ed. Castellote, 1: 322).
- 39.
This is most evident in his discussion of the faculties. While claiming that faculties are really distinct from the soul, he emphasizes right at the beginning that the soul is the “principium essendi et operandi” and that the soul operates by means of the faculties. See Suárez, De anima, disp. 3, q. 1 (ed. Castellote, 2: 56).
- 40.
- 41.
In DM 18.5.3 he points out that faculties and other qualities of the soul, although being secondary causal principles, are nevertheless real principles.
- 42.
To be sure, Aristotle repeatedly spoke about parts of the soul. But he did not take these parts to be really distinct entities . He rather conceived of them as different functions of one and the same entity ; see Johansen (2014). Of course, Suárez was not the first to change the original Aristotelian picture. Changes already started in the thirteenth century when commentators on the De anima characterized the parts of the soul as things (res) that are really or formally distinct from each other; see de Boer (2013: 227–252) and Perler (2015). But Suárez radically changed the original theory by turning the soul into a network of distinct things, each of them having its own power and its own range of activities.
- 43.
There is a striking similarity to modern theories that describe the human mind as a system of modules with a complex inner architecture; see, for instance, Carruthers (2006).
- 44.
- 45.
I am grateful to the participants at the Paris conference for stimulating questions, and to Stephan Schmid , Magali Roques , and an anonymous referee for detailed comments on earlier versions of this chapter.
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Perler, D. (2018). Suárez on the Metaphysics of Habits. In: Faucher, N., Roques, M. (eds) The Ontology, Psychology and Axiology of Habits (Habitus) in Medieval Philosophy. Historical-Analytical Studies on Nature, Mind and Action, vol 7. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00235-0_20
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