Casuistry Explained

Casuistry is a process of reasoning that seeks to resolve moral problems by extracting or extending abstract rules from a particular case, and reapplying those rules to new instances.^[1] This method occurs in applied ethics and jurisprudence. The term is also used pejoratively to criticise the use of clever but unsound reasoning, especially in relation to ethical questions (as 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 ethics, religion, and 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, 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 Aristotle (384–322 BC), yet the peak of casuistry was from 1550 to 1650, when the Society of Jesus (commonly known as the Jesuits) used case-based reasoning, particularly in administering the Sacrament of Penance (or "confession").^[6] The term became pejorative following Blaise Pascal's attack on the misuse of the method in his Provincial Letters (1656–57).^[7] The French mathematician, religious philosopher and 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.

Early modernity

The casuistic method was popular among Catholic thinkers in the early modern period. Casuistic authors include Antonio Escobar y Mendoza, whose Summula casuum conscientiae (1627) enjoyed great success, Thomas Sanchez, Vincenzo Filliucci (Jesuit and penitentiary at St Peter's), Antonino Diana, Paul Laymann (Theologia Moralis, 1625), John Azor (Institutiones Morales, 1600), Etienne Bauny, Louis Cellot, Valerius Reginaldus, and 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 doctrine of probabilism, which effectively stated that one could choose to follow a "probable opinion"that is, an opinion supported by a theologian or anothereven if it contradicted a more probable opinion or a quotation from one of the Fathers of the Church.^[12]

Certain kinds of casuistry were criticised by early Protestant theologians, because it was used to justify many of the abuses that they sought to reform. It was famously attacked by the Catholic and Jansenist philosopher Blaise Pascal during the formulary controversy against the Jesuits, in his Provincial Letters, as the use of 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 Pope Innocent XI publicly condemned sixty-five of the more radical propositions (stricti mentalis), taken chiefly from the writings of Escobar, 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]

External links

Dictionary of the History of Ideas: "Casuistry"
Accountancy as computational casuistics, article on how modern compliance regimes in accountancy and law apply casuistry
Mortimer Adler's Great Ideas – Casuistry
Summary of casuistry by Jeramy Townsley
Casuistry – Online Guide to Ethics and Moral Philosophy
Casuistry – Oxford Encyclopedia of Rhetoric catalogued at she-philosopher.com

Notes and References

Web site: Philosophy-Dictionary.org. casuistry. 7 December 2011. https://web.archive.org/web/20120118123139/http://www.philosophy-dictionary.org/casuistry. 18 January 2012. dead.
Web site: Casuistry . Dictionary of the History of Ideas . https://web.archive.org/web/20060618095059/http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/cgi-local/DHI/dhi.cgi?id=dv1-35 . 18 June 2006 . University of Virginia Library.
Book: Rolbiecki, J. J. . Runes . Dagobert D. . Casuistry . Dictionary of Philosophy . 1942 . 26 October 2023 .
Web site: Garth . Kemerling. Philosophy Pages . Casuistry . 10 December 2011 . 26 October 2023.
Web site: Harper. Douglas R.. casuist (n.). March 14, 2021. Online Etymological Dictionary.
Book: Franklin, James. The Science of Conjecture: Evidence and Probability Before Pascal. Johns Hopkins University Press. 2001. Baltimore. 83–88.
Book: Pascal, Blaise. The Provincial Letters of Blaise Pascal. Chatto & Windus. M'Crie, Thomas (trans.). 1898. eBooks@Adelaide. London. 1657. 23 January 2009. 5 September 2015. https://web.archive.org/web/20150905104257/https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/p/pascal/blaise/. dead.
Web site: 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 / Henry St John, Lord Viscount Bolingbroke. 1752 . live . https://web.archive.org/web/20220620052050/https://www.rct.uk/collection/1057691/letters-on-the-spirit-of-patriotismnbspnbspon-the-idea-of-a-patriot-kingnbsp-and . 20 June 2022 . Royal Collection Trust.
Encyclopedia: Oxford English Dictionary . subscription . 21 September 2017 . Casuistry., quoting Book: St. John, Lord Viscount Bolingbroke, Henry . 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 . A. Millar . 1752 . London . 187.
Albert Jonsen and Stephen Toulmin, The Abuse of Casuistry: A History of Moral Reasoning, Berkeley, U. California Press (1990,).
Decock. Wim. 2011. From Law to Paradise: Confessional Catholicism and Legal Scholarship. Rechtsgeschichte. 2011. 18. 012–034. 10.12946/rg18/012-034. 1619-4993. free.
Franklin, Science of Conjecture, p. 74–6, 83.
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.
Jonsen, Albert R., The Abuse of Casuistry: A History of Moral Reasoning, University of California Press, 1988. (p. 2).
Kelly, J.N.D., The Oxford History of the Popes, Oxford University Press, 1986. (p. 287).
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 .
Book: Moore, George Edward. Principia Ethica. Cambridge University Press. 1993. 0-521-44848-4. Baldwin. Thomas. Thomas Baldwin (philosopher). 2. Cambridge. 57. George Edward Moore. 1903.
Web site: Casuistry Ethics & Moral Decision Making Britannica . 2024-04-11 . www.britannica.com . en.
https://archive.today/20140527185002/http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/1402173.htm "Pope to meet with sex abuse victims for first time in June", Francis X. Rocca