El todo es mayor a la suma de sus partes: La teoría política de Suárez y la tradición contractualista

The present work attempts to place the political theory of Francisco Suarez in the social contract tradition and by so doing examine the general relationship between contractualism and natural law. It will argue that Suarez is a social contract theorist in a qualified sense of the term and in using that sense the work will show that there is complementarity rather than incompatibility between contractualism and natural law. Finally, it examines Suarez’s thesis on the emergent character of political power to suggest some points of difference with modern political theory.