Casuistry definition

Casuistry means the study and resolution of specific cases of conscience, duty, or conduct through interpretation of ethical principles or religious doctrine (Webster's Dictionary), notably in cases where more than one principle applies. More specifically, it refers to an intellectual tradition over many centuries in Europe which, parallel to the accumulation and systematization of case-law for some areas of life, holds that we require and can progress with skills and sets of exemplars to guide ethical choices in other areas too. This tradition declined in Europe after a peak in the 17th century, displaced by the search for simpler systems of moral law on the model of the triumphant natural sciences, and discredited by frequent lapses into relativism and special pleading (Jansen & Toulmin, 1988). While ‘casuistry’ became a term of ridicule, we do require skills to examine complex, idiosyncratic, difficult cases: to identify relevant principles and circumstances, and discuss which principles might fit, in which roles (Bedau, 1997).14 Casuistry--or, to take a term not discredited, ‘contextual ethics’--supplements other ethical approaches and principles, by considering how to relate them to cases and how to select or combine from them when several look relevant but in conflict.
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Examples of Casuistry in a sentence

  • Jonsen & Stephen Toulmin, The Abuse of Casuistry: A History of Moral Reasoning, at 18, (University of California Press, Berkeley,1988).

  • John Bossy, “Moral Arithmetic: Seven Sins into Ten Commandments,” in Conscience and Casuistry in Early Modern Europe, ed.

  • Casuistry operates by applying old illustrations to new problems—a dialectic between paradigm case and novel circumstance—and creates a type of knowledge that is not easily generalizable.

  • Jonsen and Stephen Toulmin, The Abuse of Casuistry: A History of Moral Reasoning, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 323, quoted in David DeGrazia, “Moving Forward in Bioethical Theory: Theories, Cases, and SpecifiedPrinciplism,” Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 17, no.

  • For discussion of this theme, see Peter Goodrich, The New Casuistry, 33 CRITICAL INQUIRY 673 (2007).

  • Lowell Gallagher, Medusa's Gaze: Casuistry and Conscience in the Renaissance (Standford: Stanford UP, 1991): 1.

  • Casuistry assigns a more important role to principles and maxims and to taxonomizing cases according to type, while situation ethics starts with cases and circumstances, not admitting the validity of general principles but proceeding only or mainly on the basis of “concrete but unique and isolated” instances (272).

  • Not Only for Law: Casuistry in Moral Science The science of ethics is very close to the study of law.

  • Casuistry and surreptitious reinterpretation were poorly suited, then, to institutional modifications and innovations of the extent necessary to establish the infrastructure for impersonal exchange.The point may be supported through the greatest privately initiated Middle Eastern institutional innovation of the half-millennium preceding the Industrial Revolution: the emergence of a “cash waqf” sector.

  • Casuistry is “the approach where we learn ethical insights primarily by studying cases”84.

Related to Casuistry

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  • Dentistry means the practice of dentistry in all of its branches;

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  • Dietitian or “licensed dietitian” means a person who maintains a license granted by the Iowa board of dietetic examiners.

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  • foreshore , in relation to a port, means the area between the high-water mark and the low-water mark relating to that port;

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  • Toddler means a child at least one year of age but less than 2 years of age.

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  • Ministry means the Ontario Ministry of the Environment;

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  • Green means products, materials, methods and processes certified by a “Green Authority” that conserve natural resources, reduce energy or water consumption, avoid toxic or other polluting emissions or otherwise minimize environmental impact.

  • Seaplane means an aeroplane capable normally of taking off from and alighting solely on water;