Probabilism in Early Modern Europe: Epistemology, Politics, and Moral Theology

FAIN: FA-57564-14

Stefania Tutino
UCLA; Regents of the University of California, Los Angeles (Santa Barbara, CA 93106-0001)

As David Foster Wallace said in his 2005 commencement speech at Kenyon College, nowadays 'the only thing that's capital-T True is that you get to decide how you're gonna try to see it.' Every day we face clashes between contrasting truths. Abortion or gay marriages are controversial because different people hold different beliefs as true, and it is hard to find a compromise when opposite truths are at stake. In the early modern world opposite Truths fought one another, and theologians were tasked with asserting their own Truth as absolutely certain. Probabilism was a novel and controversial kind of Catholic moral theology: it stressed the uncertainty and fallibility of all human religious and political norms, and it sought to find theological and epistemological venues for compromise. Examining how early modern probabilists grappled with their moral dilemmas allows us to see more clearly the roots and significance of our own quandaries and to put them in a wider and deeper perspective.

Associated Products

Uncertainty in Post-Reformation Catholicism. A History of Probabilism (Book)
Title: Uncertainty in Post-Reformation Catholicism. A History of Probabilism
Abstract: This book provides a historical account of the development and implications of early modern probabilism. First elaborated in the sixteenth century, probabilism represented a significant and controversial novelty in Catholic moral theology. Against a deep-seated tradition defending the strict application of moral rules, probabilist theoogians maintained that in situations of uncertainty, the agent can legitimately follow any course of action supported by a probable opinion, no matter how disputable. By the second half of the seventeenth century, and thanks in part to Pascal’s influential antiprobabilist stances, probabilism had become inextricably linked to the Society of Jesus and to a lax and excessively forgiving moral system. To this day, most historians either ignore probabilism, or they associate it with moral duplicity and intellectual and cultural decadence. By contrast, this book argues that probabilism was instrumental for addressing the challenges created by a geographically and intellectually expanding world. Early modern probabilist theologians saw that these challenges provoked an exponential growth of uncertainties, doubts, and dilemmas of conscience, and they realized that traditional theology was not equipped to deal with them. Therefore, they used probabilism to integrate changes and novelties within the post-Reformation Catholic theological and intellectual system. Seen in this light, probabilism represented the result of their attempts to appreciate, come to terms with, and manage uncertainty. Uncertainty continues to play a central role even today. Thus, learning how early modern probabilists engaged with uncertainty might be useful for us as we try to cope with our own moral and epistemological doubts.
Year: 2017
Primary URL: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/uncertainty-in-post-reformation-catholicism-9780190694098?cc=ca&lang=en&
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: ISBN: 97801906
Copy sent to NEH?: Yes

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