Metaphysics, Suárez teaches in Metaphysical Disputation I, is the science of being insofar as it is real being. Later he clarifies that this ‘being’ encompasses real natures, whether they actually exist or not. It seems therefore that for Suárez metaphysics engages not only with the most general features of actual things, but also with those of possible things. But to what extent are there possible things for Suárez in the first place? What does it mean for a thing or nature to be possible? And how do possible things relate to actual things? By answering these questions, the chapter reconstructs Suárez’s metaphysics of modality in general and illuminates his widely debated theory of necessary and eternal truths in particular.

According to Suárez, unlike the properties that an Aristotelian science standardly demonstrates of its subject, being’s passions or properties – transcendental unity, truth and goodness – are distinguished only rationally from their subject. Despite the real identity of being and its properties, the conception of a being as one, true or good involves a conceptual addition, according to Suárez: one formally signifies, over and above being itself, a negation of internal division, while true and good formally signify, over and above being itself, aptitudinal extrinsic denominations from intellect and appetite. The paper explains how each of the latter denominations, according to Suárez, serves to explain, point to, or make clear something about being itself, namely, its aptitude to be an object of intellect or appetite.

According to Thomas Aquinas ‘true’ is predicated essentially of things with reference to truth in the intellect. His reflections on the relation between ontic truth and cognitive truth raise questions which in later scolasticism - in connection with difficulties within the doctrine of analogy - give rise to controversies on the structure and ontological meaning of the analogia veri. In the Thomistic tradition Cajetan’s solution had a strong influence, although it reduces ontic truth to a mere extrinsic denomination. Against this position Suárez develops a new interpretation of the order of predication of ‘true’. It confirms both (a) the Aristotelian doctrine according to which the original place of truth is the intellect - and (b) the traditional doctrine of the transcendentals according to which true is not a mere extrinsic denomination, but their inner entity under a certain respect. The study seeks to explain Suárez’s solution against its historical background.

Suárez holds that a predicated universal is an ens rationis, something properly regarded as an extrinsic denomination grounded in the intrinsic individual formal unities of mind- and language-independent res; he is thus a nominalist rather than a realist, where nominalism, although this term is variously understood in his period of philosophizing, denies the existence of anything beyond individuals. This conclusion has, however, been disputed, not least because Suárez’s approach is careful and highly nuanced. The main chore of this chapter is twofold: first, to show that he is indeed a nominalist and then, second, to explicate and assess the character of his nominalism, which will also perforce involve us, albeit only briefly, in reflecting on his reservations about accepting the existence of anything which is not an individual, which is to say, then, his motivations for rejecting realism about universals.