Introduction

Francisco Suarez (1548-1617) is generally considered one of the most impor­tant philosophers of a complex era, an eclectic age of transition, overlap and coincidence in which, as Benjamin Hill termed it, Suarez �seems to have slipped between the cracks in our historiographical taxonomy'.

Within the framework of a rigorous definition of (the) law(s) and a novel demarcation of the legal realm, Suarez elaborately analyzes natural law in the second book of his De legibus ac Deo legislatore,^{[411] [412] De lege aeterna et naturali ac iuregentium (1612).[413] In general, natural law concerns �the faculty of the rational creature[414] to distinguish between good and evil'.[415] Explained in a more detailed manner in book ii, natural law is �an actual judgement of the mind', but it is not just that. At the same time �also the natural light of reason can be called natural law’,[416] �because when people do not think anything or do not make a judgement, they still (still) preserve natural law in their heart’.[417] �The light of reason bears natural law, like �a permanent sign’,[418] like a written law in itself, and can enact it at any time’.[419] Natural law is one[420] [421] [422] and it is always the same, in all people and everywhere.u}

In this contribution it is studied how Suarez scrutinizes natural law within the framework of a novel legal language and methodology and of a new demarca­tion of the legal realm that he presents in book I. Important formal key-elements of Suarez’s language and methodology, like necessity, completeness and self-suffi­ciency, or, more qualitative aspects of his system, like auto foundation, obligation andfreedom operate on interconnected epistemological, legal and theological lev­els.

Suarez’s system is fundamentally ahistorical,1² and yet at various instances effects an ex negativo evocation of historical, contingent reality, a dynamic in which for example historical exempla, traditionally timeless and still cur­rent, can become mere historical examples. It is therefore revealing of a very particular regime d’historicite, to use Frangois Hartog’s term.^{[423] [424] Also natural law that is one, unchangeable and the same in all people everywhere, is caught up in these dynamics of negative demarcation.}

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