Casuistry

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Gargantua by Albert Robida
, expressing mockery of his casuist education

In

sophistry).[2]
It has been defined as follows:

Study of cases of conscience and a method of solving conflicts of obligations by applying general principles of

moral theology to particular and concrete cases of human conduct. This frequently demands an extensive knowledge of natural law and equity, civil law, ecclesiastical precepts, and an exceptional skill in interpreting these various norms of conduct....[3]

It remains a common method in applied ethics.[4]

Etymology

According to the Online Etymological Dictionary, the term and its agent noun "casuist", appearing from about 1600, derive from the Latin noun casus, meaning "case", especially as referring to a "case of conscience". The same source says, "Even in the earliest printed uses the sense was pejorative".[5]

History

Casuistry dates from

Jansenist sympathiser attacked priests who used casuistic reasoning in confession to pacify wealthy church donors. Pascal charged that "remorseful" aristocrats could confess a sin one day, re-commit it the next, then generously donate to the church and return to re-confess their sin, confident that they were being assigned a penance in name only. These criticisms darkened casuistry's reputation in the following centuries. For example, the Oxford English Dictionary quotes a 1738 essay[8] by Henry St. John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke to the effect that casuistry "destroys, by distinctions and exceptions, all morality, and effaces the essential difference between right and wrong, good and evil".[9]

The 20th century saw a revival of interest in casuistry. In their book The Abuse of Casuistry: A History of Moral Reasoning (1988), Albert Jonsen and Stephen Toulmin[10] argue that it is not casuistry but its abuse that has been a problem; that, properly used, casuistry is powerful reasoning. Jonsen and Toulmin offer casuistry as a method for compromising the contradictory principles of moral absolutism and moral relativism. In addition, the ethical philosophies of utilitarianism (especially preference utilitarianism) and pragmatism have been identified as employing casuistic reasoning.[by whom?]

Early modernity

The casuistic method was popular among

Hermann Busembaum (d. 1668).[11]

The progress of casuistry was interrupted toward the middle of the 17th century by the controversy which arose concerning the

Fathers of the Church.[12]

Certain kinds of casuistry were criticised by early

rhetorics to justify moral laxity, which became identified by the public with Jesuitism; hence the everyday use of the term to mean complex and sophistic reasoning to justify moral laxity.[13] By the mid-18th century, "casuistry" had become a synonym for attractive-sounding, but ultimately false, moral reasoning.[14]

In 1679

Suarez and other casuists as propositiones laxorum moralistarum and forbade anyone to teach them under penalty of excommunication.[15] Despite this condemnation by a pope, both Catholicism and Protestantism permit the use of ambiguous statements in specific circumstances.[16]

Later modernity

G. E. Moore dealt with casuistry in chapter 1.4 of his Principia Ethica, in which he claimed that "the defects of casuistry are not defects of principle; no objection can be taken to its aim and object. It has failed only because it is far too difficult a subject to be treated adequately in our present state of knowledge". Furthermore, he asserted that "casuistry is the goal of ethical investigation. It cannot be safely attempted at the beginning of our studies, but only at the end".[17]

Since the 1960s, applied ethics has revived the ideas of casuistry in applying moral reasoning to particular cases in law, bioethics, and business ethics. Its facility for dealing with situations where rules or values conflict with each other has made it a useful approach in professional ethics, and casuistry's reputation has improved somewhat as a result.[18]

Pope Francis, a Jesuit, has criticized casuistry as "the practice of setting general laws on the basis of exceptional cases" in instances where a more holistic approach would be preferred.[19]

See also

  • Applied ethics – Practical application of moral considerations
  • Case-based reasoning – Process of solving new problems based on the solutions of similar past problems
  • Consequentialism – Ethical theory based on consequences
  • Dispensation (Catholic canon law) – Exemption from the obligation of law in some cases
  • First principle – Basic proposition or assumption
  • List of thought processes
     – Overview of and topical guide to thought
  • Pilpul – Method of studying the Talmud through intense textual analysis
  • Qiyas – Deductive analogy or reasoning by measuring the new situation with the given situation
  • Rhetoric – Art of persuasion
  • Rhetorical reason – Faculty of discovering the crux of the matter
  • School of Salamanca – Cultural movement
  • Situational ethics – Takes into account the particular context of an act when evaluating it ethically
  • Talmudical hermeneutics – Methods for investigation & determination of meanings of Jewish biblical scriptures
  • Heuristics
     – Problem-solving method

References

  1. ^ "Philosophy-Dictionary.org". casuistry. Archived from the original on 18 January 2012. Retrieved 7 December 2011.
  2. University of Virginia Library. Archived from the original
    on 18 June 2006.
  3. ^ Rolbiecki, J. J. (1942). "Casuistry". In Runes, Dagobert D. (ed.). Dictionary of Philosophy. Retrieved 26 October 2023.
  4. ^ Kemerling, Garth (10 December 2011). "Casuistry". Philosophy Pages. Retrieved 26 October 2023.
  5. ^ Harper, Douglas R. "casuist (n.)". Online Etymological Dictionary. Retrieved 14 March 2021.
  6. ^ Franklin, James (2001). The Science of Conjecture: Evidence and Probability Before Pascal. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. pp. 83–88.
  7. ^ Pascal, Blaise (1898) [1657]. The Provincial Letters of Blaise Pascal. eBooks@Adelaide. M'Crie, Thomas (trans.). London: Chatto & Windus. Archived from the original on 5 September 2015. Retrieved 23 January 2009.
  8. Royal Collection Trust. Archived
    from the original on 20 June 2022.
  9. ^ "Casuistry". Oxford English Dictionary. Retrieved 21 September 2017., quoting St. John, Lord Viscount Bolingbroke, Henry (1752). Letters on the spirit of patriotism : On the idea of a patriot king : and on the state of parties at the accession of King George the First. London: A. Millar. p. 187.
  10. ISBN 0-520-06960-9
    ).
  11. ISSN 1619-4993
    .
  12. ^ Franklin, Science of Conjecture, p. 74–6, 83.
  13. ^ 170 "Casuistry..destroys, by distinctions and exceptions, all morality, and effaces the essential difference between right and wrong." Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, Letters on the Spirit of Patriotism 1736 (pub. 1749), quoted in Oxford English Dictionary, 1989 ed.
  14. ISBN 0-52-006063-6
    (p. 2).
  15. ISBN 0-19-282085-0
    (p. 287).
  16. ^ J.-P. Cavaillé, Ruser sans mentir, de la casuistique aux sciences sociales: le recours à l’équivocité, entre efficacité pragmatique et souci éthique, in Serge Latouche, P.-J. Laurent, O. Servais & M. Singleton, Les Raisons de la ruse. Une perspective anthropologique et psychanalytique, Actes du colloque international «La raison rusée», Louvain la Neuve, mars 2001, Paris, La Découverte, 2004, pp. 93–118 (in French).
  17. ISBN 0-521-44848-4
    .
  18. ^ "Casuistry | Ethics & Moral Decision Making | Britannica". www.britannica.com. Retrieved 11 April 2024.
  19. ^ "Pope to meet with sex abuse victims for first time in June", Francis X. Rocca. Catholic News Service. Online.

Further reading

External links

Look up casuistry in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
Wikiquote has quotations related to Casuistry.
Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article "Casuistry".
Wikisource has the text of the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia article Casuistry.
Look up casuistry in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
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