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

  • Shannon, eds., The Context of Casuistry (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1995); Leites, Conscience and Casuistry in Early Modern Europe; Albert R.

  • Mayes, Counsel and Conscience: Lutheran Casuistry and Moral Reasoning After the Reformation (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011), 19-20.

  • Mayes, Counsel and Conscience: Lutheran Casuistry and Moral Reasoning after the Reformation (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011), 18-21.

  • Jonsen and Stephen Toulmin, The Abuse of Casuistry: A History of Moral Reasoning (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988); and Elliot Rose, Cases of Conscience: Alternatives Open to Recusants and Puritans Under Elizabeth I and James I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973).