  In the light of these and later divisions of the science of metaphysics, Suarez’ project in the Disputationes metaphysicae is to be considered a defense of the unity of metaphysics, which nevertheless prolongs the dissociation that caused these divisions. (See Darge 2004). Suarez distinguishes between being as the first object of the intellect and being as the proper subject of metaphysics: “being insofar as it is real being.” This makes it clear, finally, that the characteristic foundation of medieval metaphysics, i.e. the identity of the subject of first philosophy with the first object of the intellect, did not lead, despite its basic instability, to a ‘super-transcendental’ metaphysics; instead of sacrificing the realist understanding of metaphysics, the medieval theoreticians of the doctrine of the transcendentals attacked the identity of the subject of first philosophy with the first object of the intellect. Underlying the medieval doctrines of the transcendentals from Aquinas to Suárez, therefore, is the realist understanding of metaphysics as a ‘science of the real’ (scientia realis).