Casuistry and Probabilism
- Book Title:
- A Companion to the Spanish Scholastics
- Book Editor:
- Format:
- Book Chapter
- Year:
- 2022
- Publisher:
- Brill
- Place published:
- Leiden
- Language:
- Abstract:
In the Christian tradition, casuistry is a branch of moral theology which deals with cases of conscience, that is, moral problems which trouble the consciences of agents. Probabilism is a particular doctrine of moral decision making in cases of conscience, claiming that agents are prima facie entitled to follow opinions that have weighty reasons on their side even if more probable counter-opinions exist. This chapter suggests that probabilism permitted agents to act according to any reasonably tenable opinion, not only the one the agent considered most probably true. Moral casuistry received its strongest support from the Council of Trent reflecting its urge for increased pastoral care. As a result, casuistry reached an unprecedented scale and systematicity in early modern Catholicism. Probabilism and casuistry became highly controversial in the seventeenth century. No history of probabilism and casuistry is complete without taking these controversies into account. Christian rigorists and early modern philosophers concurred in their attacks on the allegedly too loose morality of probabilist casuists. The eighteenth century saw the rollback of casuistry on a large scale and the end of the creative development of scholastic probabilism.
- Who (Jesuits):
- What (Subjects):
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- Worldcat URL:
- Publisher URL:
- Page Range:
- 334–360
- ISBN:
- 97890042969619789004294417
- DOI:
- Comment:
- Series: Brill's Companions to the Christian Tradition, v. 102