Concept
Casuistry
Overview
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
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
In the original texts
Passages from public-domain books where Casuistry is discussed.
Casuistry, so-called, is simply the systematic effort to secure for particular instances of conduct the advantage of general rules which are asserted and believed in. By those who accept the notion of immutable regulating principles, casuistry ought to be lauded for sincerity and helpfulness, not dispraised as it usually is. Or else men ought to carry back their aversion to manipulation of particular cases, until…
John Dewey, Human Nature and Conduct
names the idea; states what it is; opens on it
It is to mistakes of this kind that the pernicious influence of such investigations has been due. For Casuistry is the goal of ethical investigation. It cannot be safely attempted at the beginning of our studies, but only at the end. =5.= But our question ‘What is good?’ may have still another meaning.
G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica
names the idea; states what it is; opens on it
=Illustration in Casuistry.=--Suppose, for example, we take the Ten Commandments as a starting-point. They are only ten, and naturally confine themselves to general ideas, and ideas stated mainly in negative form. Moreover, the same act may be brought under more than one rule. In order to resolve the practical perplexities and uncertainties which inevitably arise under such circumstances, _Casuistry_ is built up…
John Dewey, Ethics
names the idea
Such works, they imagined, might be of use both to the directors of consciences and to those who were to be directed; and hence the origin of books of casuistry.
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments
states what it is; names the idea
This instance may serve to show wherein consists the difference between casuistry and jurisprudence, even when both of them consider the obligations of the general rules of justice. But though this difference be real and essential, though those two sciences propose quite different ends, the sameness of the subject has made such a similarity between them, that the greater part of authors whose…
Adam Smith, The Essays of Adam Smith
names the idea; opens on it
Philosophers who discussed Casuistry
Related ideas
- Francisco Suárez
- G. E. Moore
- Stephen Toulmin
- Jesuits
- Jurisprudence
- Mathematician
- Law
- Bioethics
- Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke
- Natural law
- Oxford English Dictionary
- Pejorative
- Soundness
- Aristotle
- Utilitarianism
- Church Fathers
- Reformation
- Blaise Pascal
- Reason
- Principia Ethica
- Business ethics
- Moral relativism
- Moral absolutism
- Sophist
Place in the tradition
Part of Applied ethics.