Conclusion
This chapter explores the reasons why the doctrine of probabilism is no longer prominent in our intellectual and scholarly horizon. These reasons include the advent of Alphonsus Maria de’ Liguori’s equiprobabilism; the progressive loss of political, social, and cultural capital of the nineteenth-century Roman Curia; and the triumph of Cartesian epistemology in the modern secularized world. This chapter also argues for the necessity to recover the centrality of probabilism, both because probabilism and moral theology were a crucial component of the cultural, political, and religious history of early modern Europe, and because learning how early modern probabilists grappled with uncertainty can be distinctively useful for us today. Even though we are the most informed generation on Earth, we seem to be losing the ability to distinguish facts and truths from opinions. Thus, appreciating the historical significance of probabilism can help us to navigate our current epistemological and moral uncertainties.