Routledge History of Philosophy Volume IV

RENAISSANCE AND SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY RATIONALISM 75
Vitoria is best remembered for his pioneering work in international law. 31 He
gave lectures at the university on current issues and the notes of some of these
were published as relectiones on particular topics. In his De Indis (1532) he
considered and defended the rights of the American Indians against the Spanish
colonizers. In the same year he also produced a study of the rights and wrongs of
war, his De Jure Belli, in which he argued for proportionality in the use of force
as well as for the rights of non-combatants. Although Vitoria accepted there
could be a ‘just war’, he rejected religious grounds as a ‘just cause’. Thus the
Spanish had no right, on his arguments, to make war on the American Indians or
to dispossess them of their property merely because they were heathens. Vitoria
was arguing within a framework of natural law that derived from Aristotle and
Aquinas. But his concern with applied questions, which led to his being
consulted by Charles V on matters of state, shows the influence of humanism.
As well as lecturing on such topics as the just war, Vitoria also lectured on
theology. Here he broke with a centuries-old tradition by lecturing on Aquinas’s
Summa Theologica instead of the Sentences of Peter Lombard. This had already
been done by another Dominican in Italy, Thomas de Vio, commonly known as
Cajetan (1468–1534). But Vitoria pioneered the change in Spain. In doing so he
prepared the way for even greater changes from traditional styles of presentation.
These were initiated by his pupil, Francisco Suarez (1548–1617), perhaps the
most important systematic philosopher of the period. 32 The traditional scholastic
mode of presentation was the commentary. Suarez’s most important work, his
Disputationes metaphysicae (1597), was the first systematic and independent
treatise on metaphysics. It dealt with a wide range of topics, from the nature of
metaphysics to the existence of God, from universals to our knowledge of
singulars, causality, freedom, individuality and many others. Although, as a
Jesuit, Suarez was committed to Aquinas in theology, he departed from St
Thomas in treating philosophy as independent of theology. His Latin was easy to
read by comparison with the usual run of scholastic writings. Moreover some of
his thought, for instance his nominalism, already reflected a critical approach to
traditional scholasticism, and some accommodation to the ‘modern way’ of
William of Occam and his followers. These are among reasons why he may have
been so influential. But the pervasive influence of Suarez on seventeenthcentury
philosophy was not due entirely to the virtues of his own writings—remarkable
though they were. Suarez was the major philosopher of the Society of Jesus and
the Jesuits played a key role in the best educational institutions of Catholic
Europe. Suarez’s metaphysics also found its way into textbooks and was widely
taught in Protestant universities. In these diverse ways his Disputations became
an important part of the background to Descartes 33 in a Catholic context and to
Leibniz in his Protestant German context. 34
Suarez was also very influential as a political philosopher. The Dutch theorist
Huig de Groot (1583–1645), known by his Latin name of Grotius, was indebted
to Suarez and the Thomist tradition of natural law. 35 Grotius, who is regarded as
the first theorist of natural rights, found in this tradition an answer to the