Abstract
Describes casuistry and its history in the West, in particular ancient Greek, Hebrew, Muslim, and Roman Catholic and Protestant Christian casuistries and provides an explanation of how casuistry was bloodied by bitter controversies, but lived on to emerge later when needed.
Writing intellectual history is like trying to nail jelly to the wall.
—attributed to William Hesseltine
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The perspective here is western. Although meaningful narratives and notions of virtue exist elsewhere, identifiable casuistries and theories of virtue are mostly western.
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Maxims are “the kinds of phrases typically invoked by ordinary people when arguing a moral issue: “Don’t kick a man when he is down” or “One good turn deserves another.” These maxims are seldom further proved; their relevance is seldom explicitly demonstrated; yet they play an important role in the development of a moral argument” (Jonsen and Toulmin 1988, p. 253).
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(Jonsen and Toulmin 1988, pp. 16–19). Albert Jonsen and Stephen Toulmin describe the debate within the 1974 US Congressional National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research as follows:
The eleven commissioners had varied backgrounds and interests. They included men and women; blacks and whites; Catholics, Protestants, Jews, and atheists; medical scientists and behaviorists psychologists; philosophers; lawyers; theologians; and public interest representatives. In all, five commissioners had scientific interests and six did not; and before they started work, few onlookers expected them to have much basis for agreement, either about general moral principles or about the application of these principles to particular problems. On hearing the composition of the commission one respected commentator reportedly said, “Now we shall presumably see matters of eternal principle decided by a six-to-five vote!” All the same, things never worked out that way in practice. At no time in its activities did the commission’s opinion divide cleanly along a line between scientists and laypeople; nor did the other differences of background have anything resembling their expected effect on the practical discussions. Quite the contrary: so long as the commissioners stayed on the taxonomic or casuistical level, they usually agreed in their practical conclusions. (Jonsen and Toulmin 1988, p. 17)
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Wenley explains further: “apart from questions… that seem to us as if they savoured of narrow casuistry (like the position of women, personal purity, slavery), the absence of dislocation between the ideal spirit and the real career, so evident in the Greek ethos… restricts casuistry in the main to those larger vital problems that must accompany further definition of the ideal itself” (Wenley 1911, p. 242).
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For more on Jewish law’s historical roots, see (Derrett 1974; Falk 1972).
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(Jonsen, “Casuistry” 1986, p. 78). In certain Shi’a Muslim sects, a qualified interpreter called a mujtahid made up his own rulings on the permissibility of an Islamic law, but only for himself.
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(Wenley 1911, p. 243). Wenley further describes how interpretation of the Prophet came to be regarded as a science, how conflicts of “sayings” came to form the basis of Muslim casuistry, and how opposition arose between those who appealed to tradition and those who desired to systematize the law. Islam, he concludes, has a casuistic code applicable to private affairs and a parallel law of the land, with the former being sacred and prescriptive. This situation is not unlike the mediaeval condition where canon and secular laws provided private and public codes wherein the application of the private code rendered it more casuistic in a moral rather than legal sense (Wenley 1911, p. 243). For another survey of Muslim casuistic history see, (Jonsen and Toulmin 1988, pp 111–112, 285, 310).
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(Abbas 2004). For more, see (Khare 1999).
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Although some such as Ceclia Lynch have used casuistry as an interpretive tool to understand aspects of Islam, Muslim casuistry is not used much today. See (Lynch 2005).
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Ayaan Hirsi Ali distinguishes spiritual, social, and political Islam in recounting her experiences as a Muslim woman living in various Muslim and secular cultures. The historical account here provides the rational behind the politicization of Islam that she describes (Hirsi Ali 2013)
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Jonsen notes that the summas , “not only listed sins and penances but defined sorts of action, distinguished seriousness, presented mitigating circumstances, and stated, in brief fashion, reasons for these positions” (Jonsen, “Casuistry” 1986, p. 79).
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(Jonsen, “Casuistry” 1986, p. 80; Jonsen and Toulmin 1988, pp. 159–160; Wenley 1911, p. 245). For more on Perkins and Taylor , see (Keenan 1995, pp. 122–124; Miller 1995, p. 132; Wenley 1911, p. 245).
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(Miller 1995, p. 132; Wenley 1911, p. 245) Miller’s and Wenley ’s assessments could be applied as well to Jeremy Taylor ’s 1,650 tome, Holy Living and Holy Dying , a 515 page complicated compilation of prayers, rules, and recommendations published prior to Ductor Dubitantium (1660). See (Taylor 1831).
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For an explanation of the theological, philosophical, and political reasons for casuistry’s decline, see (Jonsen 1993). For more on the trend toward use of principles in modern philosophy, see the commentary on William Whewell and Henry Sidgwick in (Jonsen, “Casuistry and Clinical Ethics” 1986, p. 66; Jonsen and Toulmin 1988, p. 163). and (Jonsen 1991, p. 296).
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Calkins, M. (2014). Features and History. In: Developing a Virtue-Imbued Casuistry for Business Ethics. Issues in Business Ethics, vol 42. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-8724-6_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-8724-6_1
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