Vázquez Gabriel (1549–1604), Spanish Jesuit theologian and philosopher. Born in Villaescusa de Haro, he studied at Alcalá de Henares and taught at Ocaña, Madrid, Alcalá, and Rome. He was a prolific writer; his philosophically most important work is a commentary on Aquinas’s Summa theologiae.
Vázquez was strongly influenced by Aquinas, but he differed from him in important ways and showed marked leanings toward Augustine. He rejected the Thomistic doctrine of the real distinction between essence and existence and the position that matter designated by quantity (materia signata quantitate) is the principle of individuation. Instead of Aquinas’s five ways for proving the existence of God, he favored a version of the moral argument similar to the one later used by Kant and also favored the teleological argument. Following Augustine, he described the union of body and soul as a union of two parts. Finally, Vázquez modified the doctrine of formal and objective concepts present in Toletus and Suárez in a way that facilitated the development of idealism in early modern philosophy. He accomplished this by identifying the actual being (esse) of the thing that is known (conceptus objectivus) with the act (conceptus formalis) whereby it is known.
See also AQUINAS , AUGUSTINE , ESSENTIAL — ISM , IDEALISM , SUÁREZ , TOLETU. J.J.E.G.