Tad Schmaltz | Suárez, Categorial Accidents, and Fundamental Metaphysics | Philosophy Speaker Series

Abstract: In his Metaphysical Disputations (1597), the Spanish Jesuit Francisco Suárez attempts to defend “the received philosophical dogma”—deriving from Aristotle’s Categories—that there are “nine genera of accidents beyond substance.” In this defense, Suárez proposes a middle way between “realist” and “nominalist” accounts of the categorial accidents. Yet his discussion of this middle way serves to draw attention to a more fundamental division of accidental reality that is reflected even in the views of early modern critics of the categories. I illustrate this point by considering the transformation of Aristotelian accidents in the work of Descartes.