Machiavelli's Moral Theology: Probabilism and Proportionalism, Adultery and Abortion

Two things I read recently help explain each other: Fr. Servais Pinckaers’ wonderful book, Sources of Christian Ethics, and Machiavelli’s despicable play, Mandragola.

In Mandragola, the wicked Priest Father Timoteo is paid a bribe to persuade a woman to commit adultery. He tells her:

As to the conscience, you have to take this general principle: that where there is a certain good and an uncertain evil, one should never leave that good for fear of that evil.

That is horrible moral advice- but what is remarkable is that the sophistry Machiavelli invents for his character Timoteo in 1518 precisely anticipates the moral theology some Catholic theologians would espouse in the 1600s. Pinckaers in Sources of Christian Ethics writes on p275:

The first to express the idea that originated probabilism was a Spanish Dominica, Bartholomew of Medina, who in 1580 wrote: “It seems to me that if an opinion is probable, it is lawful to follow it, even if the opposite opinion is more probable”

Take the opinion: be fruitful and multiply. That is the probable good Timoteo gestures toward as a certain good, outweighing the opinion that she should not commit adultery. It was not until St. Alphonsus Liguouri in the 1700s that this confusion about probable reasons was resolved; only considered, justified reasons had any weight. Therefore Timoteo was wrong to claim a more “certain” good could justify the violation of the 6th commandment.

Earlier in Mandragola, Timoteo accepted a bribe to justify another abominable act- abortion. The excuse he offers for such sin is as follows:

Keep in mind, many goods will result from [the abortion]… and on the other side, you don’t offend anything but a piece of unborn flesh, without sense, which could be dispersed in a thousand ways; and I believe that good is that which does good to the most, and that by which the most are contented.

The moral justification Timoteo offers for the intentional murder of an unborn child is utilitiarian- or as it would be called in 1960s moral theology: proportionalism. Consequentialism sides with the greatest good for the greatest number, whatever results in the least pain. Proportionalism disagreed with the traditional natural law view that to intentionally take an innocent human life is an intrinsically evil action; the circumstances of the act, and better results for the overall state of affairs outweigh the evil they said (see page 430 of Sources of Christian Ethics and Chris Kaczor’s Proportionalism and the Natural Law Tradition).

John Paul II would decisively reject proportionalism in his Encyclical Veritatis Splendor as a heresy, but what is remarkable once again is that Machiavelli anticipated this sophistry in Catholic moral doctrine by 400 years. In general, Pinckaers attributes such post-Vatican II casuistry to “Freedom of Indifference” and the voluntarism of Ockham- a rejection of reason and the “Freedom for Excellence” found in Aquinas and earlier Christian theologians and Greek philosophy.

It goes to show that post-Ockham the heresies of Christian moral theology were always there for brilliant sophists like Machiavelli to pick up- but also that there are philosophical answers to Machiavelli. In the end of the play Mandragola, the woman gives in to the adultery scheme and abandons her Christian moral compass- telling her seducer “I take you for lord, master, and guide; you are my father and defender, and I want you to be my every good.” This is probably Machiavelli’s own sick fantasy- to have a woman adore him like a god, even though he treats women like dirt. The speech is totally unrealistic in the context of the play I think- it would only prove that the woman was not as good as she was purported to be. Mandragola shows the limit of Machiavellianism- at the end of the day these expressions of “love” are pathetic- not comedic at all.