We are proud to present a bilingual edition of the selected peer-reviewed papers that were submitted for the International Symposium on Jesuit Studies on the thought of the Jesuit Francisco Suárez (1548â1617). The symposium was co-organized in Seville in 2018 by the Departamento de Humanidades y FilosofÃa de la Universidad Loyola AndalucÃa and the Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies at Boston College.
Suárez was a philosopher, theologian, and jurist who had a significant cultural impact on the development of modernity. Commemorating the four-hundredth anniversary of his death, the symposium studied the work of Suárez and other Jesuits of his time in the context of diverse traditions that came together in Europe between the late Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and early modernity.
Can the work of the early modern Jesuits be seen not only as a forerunner of philosophical, political, or legal modernity but also as an expression of an alternative modernity? What is the relationship between the Jesuit traditions and the development of Suárezâs work and of his contemporaries? What elements of their thought may today be relevant to face the crisis of modernity?
These and many other intriguing questions are explored in the following introduction (in Spanish) and nineteen essays (eleven in English and eight in Spanish) that are divided in five sections: Part 1âMetaphysics; Part 2âReligion, Law, Society; Part 3âPolitical Theories; Part 4âPsychology; and Part 5âLegacy.
With another recent volume edited by Cristiano Casalini, which was also published in my Jesuit Studies series (Brill), we are hoping to fill many lacunae in the historiography on early modern philosophy, which until very recently had been rather ideologically biased. The picture of early modernity that is emerging from this new scholarship seems to be richer and much more complex than many historians imagined. Professor Juan Antonio Senent de Frutos and I will continue collaborating on several new editorial projects, including the critical edition of Suárezâs works in English and Spanish translations.