Quasi-Absolute Time in Francisco Suárez's Metaphysical Disputations

Abstract

Suárez's discussion of time in the Metaphysical Disputations is one of the earliest long treatises on time (extending over sixty pages), and includes detailed arguments supporting the view that physical actions take place within an absolute temporal reference frame. Whereas some previous thinkers, such as John Duns Scotus and Peter Aureole, had made tantalising suggestions that time exists independently of physical changes, their ideas were primarily negative theses in response to perceived problems with the dominant view that time was caused by the celestial motion. Suárez, in contrast, provides a positive thesis based on his revision of traditional, Scholastic metaphysics. He argues that the ordering of earlier and later events can only be understood by conceiving events as existing within the embrace of a ‘flowing and successive space’ which he refers to as ‘entirely necessary and immutable in its own flux’ (omnino necessarium et immutabile in suo fluxu) - something at least very like an absolute temporal reference frame. Yet it would be simplistic to describe Suárez's work on time only in terms of its nascent absolutism, since for him there is a second kind of time, a more properly ‘real’ time, which is an accident of material being. This kind of time is ontologically tied to the most intimate existence of objects, creating a plurality of individual continua of time - one for each distinct being. He calls this kind of time ‘intrinsic time’ (tempus intrinsecum). Suárez's dualistic account of time, in which he proposes an ‘intrinsic time’, linked to being, which exists within a second order absolute temporal reference frame, or ‘imaginary succession’, forms a bridge between scholasticism and early modern philosophy providing a foundation for the work of later absolutists like Gassendi and Newton.

Notes

¹ For further biographical details see J. Gracia, ‘Francisco Suárez: the Man in History’, American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, 65:3 (1991), 259–266.

² J.P. Doyle, ‘Introduction’, to F. Suárez, On Beings of Reason: De entibus rationis: Metaphysical disputation LIV (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 1995), 14.

³ S.H. Daniel, ‘Seventeenth Century Scholastic Treatments of Time’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 42:4 (1981), 589.

⁴ Disputations 5–7, 10, 11, 17–19, 31, and part of 23 are available in English. See, for fuller bibliographic detail, Freddoso, ‘Bibliography’, in Suárez, On Efficient Causality (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994), 409–411.

⁵ F. Suárez, Disputationes Metaphysicae (Facsimile copy of Editio Nova, Paris, 1866) (Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1965), ‘Ratio et discursus totius operis, Ad lectorem’, lxv–vi.

⁶ For comment on this matter by a number of historians, as well as a discussion of possible precursors to the ‘non-Aristotelian’ ordering, see Doyle, ‘Introduction’, 8, note 50. For an overview of the topic ordering of the Suárezian categories see Fredosso, ‘Bibliography’, xvi–xvii.

⁷ Gracia, ‘Francisco Suárez’, 262.

⁸ A problem to be discussed further, below.

⁹ Daniel, ‘Seventeenth Century Scholastic Treatments’, 591, referring to Suárez, Disputation 50, XII, 13–16.

¹⁰ A useful discussion of permanentia, in particular the aevum, can be found in C. Esposito, ‘The Concept of Time in the Metaphysics of Suárez’, in The Medieval Concept of Time: Studies on the Scholastic Debate and its Reception in Early Modern Philosophy, edited by P. Porro (Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2001).

¹¹ Suárez, Disputationes Metaphysicae, 50, VIII, 4. ‘[…] in rerum natura nullum est ens successivum, quod supponi possit ad durationem successivum, nisi motus … Et ratio est, quia nihil est per se in continua successione, nisi quatenus est in fieri, per quod non simul, sed paulatim aquirit suum esse; ergo continua successio primo ac per se est tantum in motu’, (my translation).

¹² Suárez, Disputationes Metaphysicae, 50, IX, 5. ‘[…] sunt in eo motu tot partes durationis, quot sunt partes motus […]’, my translation.

¹³ F. Suárez, Disputationes Metaphysicae, 50, IX, 4.

¹⁴ F. Suárez, Disputationes Metaphysicae, ‘[…] non colligitur distinctio in re inter durationem illam, […] et illud esse, cujus est duratio […] Nam in eodem motu, verbi gratia, unius circulationis coeli, eadem est realis duratio, quia idem est reale esse talis motus […]’, my translation.

¹⁵ F. Suárez, Disputationes Metaphysicae, 50, IX, 1. ‘Neque ab hoc discordat definitio temporis ad Aristotele data, quod sit numerus motus secundum prius et posterius, id est, quod sit numerus partium motus sibi succedentium secundum prius et posterius; ergo ipsamet partes motus sunt, quae tempus componunt secundum illum existentiae modum, quem habent in rerum natura, qui solum est secundum successionem prioris et posterioris […]’, (my translation).

¹⁹ Suárez, Disputationes Metaphysicae, 50, IIX, 6. ‘[…] in omni motu continuo esse intrinsecam et realem durationem successivum, et consequenter, si nomine temporis sola hujusmodi duratio significetur, sequitur non esse unum et idem tempus omnium motuum, sed multiplicari juxta numeram et multitudinem motuum, et variari etiam juxta motuum diversitatem […] omnis res, quae in esse reali durat, per durationem realem et intrinsecam durat; ergo quaelibet ex his rebus durat per durationem reali sibi intrinsecam; ergo multiplicantur hae durationes juxta multitudinem earum rerum, quae sic durant’, (my translation).

¹⁶ Aristotle, Physics, 218a 25-30. Loeb Edition in Greek (2 vols), English trans. Philip H. Wicksteed & Francis M. Cornford. (London: Heinemann, 1929).

¹⁷ Averroes, Aristotelis Opera cum Averrois Commentariis, Vol. IV, Liber Quartus, Summa Tertia ‘De Tempore’, Caput 3, comm 98, 178L-M (facsimile of edition Venetiis apud Junctas, 1562) (Frankfurt: Minerva, 1962).

¹⁸ P. Aureole, Commentorium in secundum librum Sententiarum, dist. II, Quaest. I, art. 4, (41), quoted in P. Duhem, Medieval Cosmology: Theories of Infinity, Place, Time, Void, and the Plurality of Worlds, edited and translated by R. Ariew (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1985), 304.

²⁰ Unlike some of his predecessors (Averroes, for example), Suárez nowhere supports the hypothesis that the heavenly motion creates time. Despite this, in his regularly cited 1973 paper ‘Toward Absolute Time’ (Ariotti, ‘Toward Absolute Time: The Undermining and Refutation of the Aristotelian Conception of Time in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, Annals of Science, 30 (1973), 31–50), Piero Ariotti insists that, despite Suárez's clear arguments to the contrary, he does in fact believe that the first heavenly motion is the progenitor of time. This misunderstanding has caused some confusion in the subsequent secondary literature. Ariotti cites the following passage from the disputation on time to support his views:

[…] there is only one time and it is given in the movement of the heavens […] for this movement is the only one in which all the required conditions for measurement are given. This is seen sufficiently in the use that we make of it, for whenever we wish to judge the duration of an action or an inferior movement, we compare it with the movement of the heaven insofar as we can know it

(Ariotti, 34).

Ariotti concludes that Suárez believes the motion of the primum mobile to constitute time ‘in its fundamental sense’, and that ‘clearly, Suárez's view of time is reductionistic [i.e. reduces time to the motion of the primum mobile]’. Ariotti takes his English translation of the passage from a Spanish translation from the Latin (Suárez, Disputationes Metaphysicae, Disp. L, Sect.X, 11; Text and Spanish translation, S.R. Romeo, S.C. Sanchez and A.P. Zanon, Disputaciones Metafisicas (Madrid, 1966), vol. vii, 246; quoted in Ariotti, 34). When we go directly to the Latin, however, the passage falls into place: ‘[…] concluditur unicum esse tempus in universo, quod propriam rationem extrinsicae mensurae habeat, illudque esse in motu coeli’, or ‘[…] it is concluded that there is only one time in general, which is a suitable manner of extrinsic measure, and that is in the motion of heaven’ (from the Editio Nova: 50, X, 11, 961). Ariotti has confused Suárez's thoughts on the measurement of time, as his thoughts on the ontology of time. The heavenly motion has no significance in Suárez's ontology of time.

²¹ Suárez, Disputationes Metaphysicae, 50, IX, 5. ‘[…] negatur in eodem seu aequali motu esse majorem aut minorem durationem quoad realem entitatem ejus […] aequalem motum posse magis vel minus durare, quod tamen non provenit ex eo quod habet plures, vel majores partes durationis, sed ex eo quod illas partes habet magis aut minus transeuntes (ut ita dicam) vel magis et minus quasi compressas et conjuntas, quod provenit ex velocitate motus’, (my translation).

²² Suárez, Disputationes Metaphysicae, 50, IX. ‘Ut autem hoc melius comprehendatur, distinguendem est inter illud intervallum, seu spatium imaginarium successivum, quod mente concipimus tanquem necessario fluens ex aeternitate, et realem durationem motus, quae verum ac reale tempus appelatur. Haec rursus realis duratio dupliciter potest considerari: uno modo, absolute secundum solam suam realitatem; alio modo, ut coexistens, et quasi replens (ut ita dicum) quamdam partem illius imaginariae successionis, cui coexistere concipitur. Nam, sicut in corporibus concipimus quoddam spatium permanens, cujus aliquam partem replet quodlibet corpus in loco existens, ita successione temporum concipimus quoddam spatium fluens et successivum, cujus aliquam partem replet omnis motus realiter fluens; quod si fuisset motus ab aeterno; intelligeretur ut replens totum illud spatium, eique coexistens. Igitur, si realis duratio motus apprehendatur ut coexistens tali parti illius successionis imaginariae, quae praeteriit, et ut sic appelletur tempus praeteritum, impossibile est ut sub ea connotatione et rationis apprehensione iterum producatur, non quidem ex parte sua, sed ex parte alterius extremi. Et ratio est, quia illud spatium imaginarium fluens concipatur ut omnino necessarium et immutabile in suo fluxu; et ideo pars ejus, quae concipiatur ut semel praeterita, non potest concipi ut iterabilis; nam illud spatium, cum concipiatur ut omnino necessarium et non causatum, etiam concipi debet ut habens intrinsecam necessitatem in fluxu et ordine suarum partium, ac proinde, quae semel praeteriit, non potest concipi ut iterum rediens. Ex quo fit ut pars realis temporis, quae semel coextitit parti praeteritae illius successionis imaginariae, non possit iterum ei coexistere. Et ideo tempus praeteritum sub hoc conceptu coexistentis, seu replentis talem partem spatii successive imaginarii, non potest redire […]

‘Et sane, quandocunque loquimur de tempore praeterito ut irrecuperabili, seu quod iterum redire non potest, vel apprehendimus illam continuam imaginariam successionem omnino necessariam et immutabilem, vel, si simul concipimus aliquam realem durationem aut circulationem coeli, apprehendimus illam ut existentem in tali parte illius successivi intervalli, quae neque antea fuisse, nec postea esse iterum potest. Atque it vidur locutus Augustinus dicto capite 23, lib. 11 Confess. Nam cum dixisset, cessante motu coeli, pugnam Josue actam esse per suum spatium temporis quod ei sufficeret, concludit dicens: Video igatur tempus quamdam esse distensionem […]’, (my translation).

²⁴ Ockham, ‘Utrum Haec sit Concedenda’, Q. 39. ‘Sic igitur dico quod haec est vera “tempus est”, intelligendo per istam propositionem “tempus est” istam propositionem “aliquid movetur, unde anima mensurat motum alterius”. Et nihil aliud intelligit Philosophus per illam propositionem “tempus est”’, (my translation).

²⁵ Ockham, Tractus de Successivus, cap. II, fol. 139, col. b, 120; passage translated into English in Duhem, Medieval Cosmology, 306.

²⁶ Ockham, ‘Utrum Haec sit Concedenda’, Q. 40, ‘Utrum Tempus sit Motus Secundum Rei Veritatem’. ‘[…] Dico quod si motus caeli fiat in duplo velocior, tunc fiet in mediate temporis illius in quo modo fit, quia aliquis alius motus inferior qui est regularis et uniformis est tempus et mensura motus caeli. Et quia motus caeli in duplo velocior quam nunc sit coexsistit minori successioni in duplo quam motus regularis et uniformis mensurantis motum caeli, et motus caeli tardior nunc coexsistit maiori successioni in duplo, ideo motus caeli velocior fieret in duplo minori tempore quam motus caeli qui nunc est’, (my translation).

²⁷ Ockham, ‘Utrum Haec sit Concedenda’, Q. 42. ‘Ad argumentum principale (“Utrum Secundum Intentionem Philosophi haec sit Vera ‘Motus Caeli est Tempus’”) nego consequentiam quia si omnia corpora caelestia starent, sicut fuit in tempore Iosue, adhuc aliquis motus inferior posset mensurare alios motus rotae figule et aliquis motus imaginatus. Sed isto casu posito, tunc non esset tempus quod esset idem cum motu caelesti', (my translation).

²³ An example used by Ockham, ‘Utrum Haec sit Concedenda de Virtute Sermonis “Tempus est Ens”’, in Quaestiones in Libros Physicorum Aristotelis, Opera Philosophica et Theologica, edited by S. Brown, vol. 6 (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute, 1984), Q. 39, 500.

²⁸ Suárez, Disputationes Metaphysicae, 50, IX, 3–4. ‘Nam si primum mobile duplo majori velocitate moveretur, circulatio integra solis aequalis motus esset ac nunc est, nam esset integer transitus aequalis mobilis per aequale spatium; tempus autem ejus non esset idem quod nunc est; nunc enim est tempus integrae diei, tunc autem solum esset semidiei, et ita potest tempus in eodem motu in infinitum dimimui, sicut potest idem motus in infinitum velocior fieri. Et e converso, si sol tardius moveretur, posset duos, verbi gratia, integros dies in una circulatione consumere, et tunc motus esset aequalis ei, qui tunc est in uno die; tempus autem esset duplo majus; ergo est in re aliquid distinctum a motu, quandoquidem eidem motui fit additio vel diminutio temporis.

‘Respondetur primo, aliud esse in aliquo motu esse plus vel minus durationis realis, aliud vero quod motus ipse plus vel minus duret, secundum coexistentiam ad aliud tempus extrinsecum, aut verum, aut conceptum sen imaginarium […] Nam in eodem motu, verbi gratia, unius circulationis coeli, eadem est realis duratio, quia idem est reale esse talis motus, et consequenter eadem est realis permanentia ejus, quanquamtota illa duratio per comparationem ad extrinsecum tempus, vel ad successionem imaginarium, majis vel minus durare posset, juxta velociorem vel tardiorem transitum illius motus’, (my translation).

²⁹ Suárez, Disputationes Metaphysicae, 50, II, 16. ‘[…] nam sicut quies dicit permanentiam in eodem loco, ita duratio dicit permanentia in eodem esse; ergo sicut quies in re non addit, nisi privationem motus, ita duratio non addit, nisi negationem’, (my translation).

³⁰ Suárez, Disputationes Metaphysicae, 50, II, 20. ‘[…] res quaelibet ex vi suae actualis existentiae, ut sic, incidit necessario in tempus ipsum imaginarium, vel in aliquid ejus, et […] si eadem existentia immutata perserveret, potest coexistere toti illi, etiamsi in infinitum successive extendatur, seu extendi concipiatur […]’, (my translation).

³¹ Milič Čapek, for example, traces the idea that ‘imaginary’ space and time refer to the space and time outside of the sphere of fixed stars required by some theologians to allow God to move the cosmos rectilinearly, should he wish to do so, as was required in the Decree of 1277, for example. M. Čapek, ‘The Conflict Between the Absolutist and the Relational Theory of Time Before Newton’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 48 (1987), 595–608 (607); see also See Fortin and O'Neill (translators), ‘Condemnation of 219 Propositions’, in Medieval Political Philosophy: a Sourcebook, edited by R. Lerner and M. Mahdi (Toronto: Collier-Macmillan Canada, Ltd., 1963), 335–354. Pierre Duhem has been the most enthusiastic proponent of this reading, arguing that the Decree of 1277 was the impetus for the idea of absolute time and space, and the acceptance of vacua. Duhem's evidence for these very strong claims is rather unreliable, however.

³² Daniel, ‘Seventeenth Century Scholastic Treatments’, 595.

³³ Daniel, ‘Seventeenth Century Scholastic Treatments’, 595.

³⁴ F. Suárez, On Beings of Reason (De Entibus Rationis): Disputation LIV, translated by J.P. Doyle (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 1995), disp. 54, IV, 7, 95.

³⁵ Suárez, Disputationes Metaphysicaes, 50, IX, 1–2.

³⁶ Aristotle, Physics, IV, 218a 2-3. Suárez investigates this idea with respect to successive existence, i.e. intrinsic time (Suárez, Disputationes Metaphysicae, 50, IX, 19–23), but alas not directly in respect of imaginary time.

³⁷ Suárez, On Beings of Reason, VI, 1–8, 116–121.

³⁸ Suárez, On Beings of Reason, III, 8, 89.

³⁹ Suárez, On Beings of Reason, I, 8, 64–65.

⁴² Suárez, On Beings of Reason, IV, 7, 95.

⁴³ Suárez, On Beings of Reason, V, 23, 114.

⁴⁴ Suárez, On Beings of Reason, VI, 3, 118.

⁴⁰ J.F. Niermeyer, Mediae Latinitatis Lexicon Minus (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1993) suggests a reading of the medieval use of conceptus as a ‘physical conception’, as well as a ‘thought or idea’.

⁴¹ Suárez proposes a spatial counterpart to imaginary time, the spatium imaginarium, or ‘imaginary space’. Just as his discussion of duration falls under the disputation on Quando, ‘Time-when’, imaginary space is discussed under Ubi, ‘Place-where’ (Disputation 51). In a similar manner to his treatment of time, for Suárez's, things contain a certain ‘place’ within them (as intrinsic time is ‘in’ a body), and this place is embedded in the second-order container of ‘imaginary space’. Importantly for Suárez, space and time, even imaginary space and time, are to be discussed in relation to the things they contain, not as an independent arena which ought to be considered separately to, and before, those things (as Newton considers absolute space and time in the ‘Scholium’ to the Principia). This is not a coherent, absolute ‘spacetime’.

⁴⁵ As quoted in B. Brundell, Pierre Gassendi: From Aristotelianism to a New Natural Philosophy (Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1987), 66. It is also interesting to note that by 1689, a trend of calling absolute time ‘imaginary’ had slipped away somewhat. In John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding, published that year, Locke says: ‘[Men] term what is beyond the limits of the universe, ‘imaginary space;’ as if it were nothing, because there is no body existing in it. Whereas duration, antecedent to all body, and to the motions which it is measured by, they never term ‘imaginary […]’, J. Locke, Essay, Book II, Chap. XV.

⁴⁶ P. Gassendi, ‘Syntagma Philosophicum’, Opera Omnia I, 222, translation by M. Čapek, ‘The Conflict Between’, 600. Note that Čapek mis-cites this passage as occurring on page 322 of v. I of the Opera Omnia.

⁴⁸ Lucretius, De rerum natura, translated by R.E. Latham (London: Penguin, 1994), 459–63.

⁴⁹ P. Gassendi, ‘Syntagma philosophicum’, Sec. 1, Bk. 2, Chap. 1, translated by C.B. Brush, in Gassendi, Pierre, The collected works of Pierre Gassendi, edited and translated by Craig B. Brush. (New York: Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1972, 384). See also E. Grant, Much ado about nothing: Theories of Space and Vacuum from the Middle Ages to the Scientific Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 209–10, and see note 182, 392, for a detailed discussion of influences on Gassendi in his rejection of the traditional categories for space.

⁴⁷ See also M. Čapek, ‘The Conflict Between’, 596.

⁵⁰ Gassendi, ‘Syntagma philosophicum’, 198.

⁵¹ Gassendi, ‘Syntagma philosophicum’, vol. 1, quoted in Brundell, Pierre Gassendi, 66.

⁵² Gassendi, ‘Syntagma philosophicum’, ‘The Physics,’ section 1, trans. C.B. Brush, The Collected Works, 383–4.

⁵³ A claim made by Schopenhauer, cited in Doyle, ‘Introduction’, 14, note 80.

⁵⁴ Čapek, ‘The Conflict Between’, 607.

⁵⁵ I. Newton, ‘De gravitationione et aequipondio fluidorum’, in Unpublished Scientific Papers of Isaac Newton, edited and translated by A.R. Hall and M.B. Hall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962), 136.

⁵⁶ Suarez, Disputationes Metaphysicae, 50, IX.