Two Kinds of Grounding? Suárez on Natural Resultance and Foundation

In contemporary metaphysics the notion of grounding plays a crucial role, and though its precise meaning is debated, there seems to be a widespread consensus that grounding is the same in all its typical instances. In this chapter I show that the late scholastic philosopher Francisco Suárez (1549–1617) can be seen as challenging this consensus since he gives an altogether different account of the way vital capacities are “grounded” in their underlying soul and the way the truth of a thought is “grounded” in its object: while a vital capacity is something over and above the soul, from which it “naturally results,” the truth of a thought is no additional entity apart from the thought and its object, in which it is “founded.” So, in addition to contributing two intriguing accounts of vital capacities and truth, Suárez’s theories of natural resultance and foundation make an interesting case for the possibility that grounding might not be a single and unified form of metaphysical dependence as contemporary metaphysicians seem to presuppose.