ABSTRACT: In the middle decades of the seventeenth century significant steps towards modern consequentialist ethics were taken by philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes and Richard Cumberland. This article demonstrates that Catholic, and particularly Jesuit, moral theologians significantly contributed to the rise of consequentialist ethics. Juan de Lugo and Francesco Sforza Pallavicino developed new consequentialist conceptions of natural law. De Lugo introduced the preponderance of good over bad consequences of objects of the will as the primary yardstick of morality. Rodrigo de Arriaga and others vehemently criticized this novel standard of moral action. By contrast, Sforza Pallavicino used it for his own initially rule consequentialist approach, later merging consequentialist and contractarian considerations in a further new approach to natural law. Protestant natural lawyers were demonstrably aware of Pallavicino's initial approach, with Leibniz becoming notably influenced by it. Catholic theologians in German speaking lands discussed Pallavicino's revised approach until the late eighteenth century.
Rudolf Schuessler (Wed,) studied this question.