Aux limites de la métaphysique : parties, indivisibles et contact chez Suárez

Jean-Pascal Anfray (1, 2)

1 ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris
2 La République des savoirs : Lettres, Sciences, Philosophie

This paper explores Suárez’s account of contact in continuous bodies. It analyses his dualist doctrine, which recognizes both divisible parts and indivisibles as components of continuous quantities and shows that there is mutual dependency among parts and indivisibles. I defend the claim that boundaries are things (res) and not modes and that this status as thing is consistent with their being ontologically dependent on parts. Finally, I examine two problems that threaten the consistency of Suárez’s account: how to account for the contact in qualitative continua and how to explain the relation between an indivisible boundary and the part bounded by it.

Mots clés: Boundaries; Parts; Indivisibles; Continuous Quantity; Suárez; Jesuit Metaphysics

Domaines: Philosophie; Sciences de l'Homme et Société

Jean-Pascal Anfray. Aux limites de la métaphysique : parties, indivisibles et contact chez Suárez. Bruniana e Campanelliana, Ricerche filosofiche e materiali storico - testuali, 2022, 28 (1), pp.123-142. ⟨hal-03898853⟩