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CasuistryCasuistry (argument by cases) is an attempt to determine the correct response to a moralproblem, often a moral dilemma, by drawing conclusions based on parallels with agreed responses to pure cases, also called paradigms. Casuistry is a method of ethical case analysis. Used with a negative connotation, casuistry refers to reasoning that is specious or hair-splitting and seen as intentionally misleading. Casuistry is a branch of applied ethics. Casuistry is the basis of case lawin common law. It is the standard form of reasoning applied in common law. Casuistry takes a relentlessly practical approach to morality. Rather than applying theories, it examines cases. By drawing parallels between paradigms, so called "pure cases," and the case at hand, a casuist tries to determine the correct response (not merely an evaluation) to a particular case. The selection of a paradigm case is justified by warrants. A particular strength of casuistry is its flexibility. When a legal fact (or "legal fiction") does not correspond to reality, the mere existence of that legal fact does not impede a rational casuistic response. For example, casuistic reasoning would easily accept that illegally obtained evidence should still be admitted to a legal argument because the illegality of the methods used to obtain the evidence does not negate the value of the evidence itself. The illegal methods themselves should be prosecuted, but that is a separate issue. In contrast, a rigorous theoretical approach might find that such evidence is "not real evidence," and therefore refuse to admit it to permissible reasoning. Casuistry is successful because it does not require participants in the evaluation to agree about ethical theories or evaluations before making policy. Instead, they can agree that certain paradigmsshould be treated in certain ways, and then agree on the similarities, the so-called warrantsbetween a paradigm and the case at hand. Since most people, and most cultures, substantially agree about most pure ethical situations, casuistry often creates ethical arguments that can persuade people of different ethnic, religious and philosophical beliefs to treat particular cases in the same ways. For this reason, casuistry is the form of reasoning used in English law. Casuistry is prone to abuses wherever the analogies between cases are false. Often late medieval reasoning applied false analogies in casuistry, through allegorical interpretations, a mode of illogic that found support in the elaborate parallels deduced by Christians between Old Testament Law and New Testament events. The casuistic method was popular among Rabbinic scholarsand Catholicthinkers in the early modern period, especially the Jesuits. It was encouraged by the Catholic practice of confessionof sins to priests, which created a demand for manuals for confessors with detailed advice on cases of conscience. Casuistry was much mistrusted by early Protestant theologians, because it justified many of the abuses that they sought to reform. It was famously attacked by Pascalin his Provincial Lettersas the use of overly complex reasoning to justify moral laxity; hence the everyday use of the term to mean complex reasoning to justify moral laxity. Casuists have often been mistrusted as too self-serving, and their reasoning thought too inaccessible. The reasoning is often inaccessible because successful casuistry requires a large amount of knowledge about paradigms, and how parallels can be drawn from those paradigms to real life situations. In modern times, there is a similar tremendous resentment against lawyers and law. In modern times, casuistry has successfully been applied to law, bioethicsand business ethics, and its reputation is somewhat rehabilitated. A good reference, analysing the methodological structure of casuistic argument is The Abuse of Casuistry: A History of Moral Reasoning (1990), by Albert Jonsen and Stephen Toulmin (ISBN 0520069609). External links
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de:Kasuistik sv:Kasuistik Categories: Ethics| Common law
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