Metaphysics and Psychology of the Making of Law in Francisco Suárez

The aim of this paper is to follow Suárez’s metaphysical analysis of action and its relation to the law in order to solve the problems that law poses to human freedom from an ontological standpoint. For this purpose, I will first review Suárez’s account of action, described as a mode intrinsically related to an efficient principle. Then, I will try to show how a human action is a contingent mode, and I will describe the psychological processes whereby it is produced. After stating that the making of law is a human action and therefore a contingent mode, I will discuss whether the law may be considered as a threat to human freedom, for it produces an obligation and introduces some sort of necessity affecting other human actions. Lastly, I will explain how the law guides the citizens by the obligation it produces without harming the contingent existence of their actions. According to Francisco Suárez, action is something that pertains to the realm of efficiency but is in fact distinct from the efficient cause, the effect, and the relation that arises between them. Instead, Suárez initially defines action as the causality of an efficient cause. In other words, action is the essential and positive influx by which an external principle gives being to something else.