Necessity, Coherence and Self-Sufficiency
The understanding of law as such and its nature of necessity plays at various levels. First, coherence and completeness define the broadest framework in which law is necessarily to be set: that of theology.
In his prologue to the De legibus for example, Suarez states that the matter of law and the laws â€?is part and parcel of the field of theology'.38 Law not only finds its absolute finality and therefore ultimate cornerstone in obtaining eternal life: â€?All rules are a norm for human conduct with respect to the conscience and, consequently, the extent in which they influence deserving or not eternal life’.[449] This absolute finality also denotes the absolute coherence on the level of understanding law in itself. Things can only be considered in themselves from the totality of a field. Therefore, it is on the one hand indispensable for jurisprudence, in order to have a truly scientific dimension, to subordinate itself to philosophy.[450] On the other hand, in order to be considered in both the most general sense as such and in its concrete appearances as such, law must be considered to be part of theology.Second, working from this broadest possible framework towards the smaller objects of knowledge, the same principles of coherence and self-sufficiency are applied. When Suarez treats the distinction between the communitas perÂfecta and the communitas imperfecta, one of the fundamental elements that determines the imperfect nature of the communitas imperfecta is that the latÂter is not self-sufficient, whereas the communitas perfecta as a truly political body is[451]
Two aspects or consequences of Suarez’s deductive understanding of the law, with its stress on coherence and conceptual self-sufficiency, need to be concisely addressed: the inherent necessity and the ahistorical nature of the law. Law, from the very possibility of its existence and that of its various types, results from an inherent necessity (necessitas).
The notion of inherent necesÂsity that the Doctor Eximius brings explicitly forward in book I, to a fundamenÂtal extent expresses law as a mimetic reality that extrapolates the self-legislaÂtion of the rational being and of the communitas perfecta, and that ultimately mirrors its foundation and final goal, Deus legislator, as the final soteriological and epistemological principle of coherence.Book I offers a number of examples of how Suarez applies inherent necesÂsity. In chapter iii for example, Suarez evinces the existence of law by demonÂstrating its necessity. He deems this undertaking necessary before analysing the very nature of the law[452] The necessity of law is subsequently connected with the necessity of the rational being’s self-submission. Bringing forward his central idea of the rational being’s self-submission, Suarez maintains that it is â€?conatural and necessary for such creature to submit itself to a superior by the rule or law of which he is governed’.[453] [454] [455] [456] â€?Such law is necessary in order to live conveniently in accordance with its nature'.44 Given the condition of a rational nature, it can be said that the law is necessary. Thus, the law necessarily exists because the act to submit oneself to it is inherent to the rational creature. 4