Real cases, on the other hand, are more likely to display the sort of moral complexity and untidiness that demand the (non-deductive) weighing and balancing of competing moral considerations and the
casuistical virtues of discernment and practical judgment (phronesis)."[5]
In describing the development of the commission's guidelines, one member notes that although the eleven commissioners had different ethical, religious, and professional orientations, "so long as the Commission stayed on the taxonomic or
casuistical level, they usually agreed in their practical conclusions."[18]
Our view has been that a careful analysis and specification of principles is consistent with a wide variety of types of ethical theory, including virtue theory and some accounts that came to recent prominence after we wrote the book, such as communitarian theories,
casuistical theories, the ethics of care, etc.
Its worst failing may be its enormous reluctance to question the conventional ends and goals of medicine, thereby running a constant risk of simply legitimating, by way of ethical tinkering and
casuistical fussiness, the way things are.
In The Abuse of Casuistry, Jonsen and Toulmin attempt to make this method more explicit, connect it to the historical tradition of
casuistical reasoning in moral theology, and show how it might be fruitfully applied to contemporary moral controversies.
Some know that the truth is being stretched by medical record practitioners, who are defining diagnoses with "
casuistical hairsplitting."(38)
He switched off the
casuistical wireless, drew the curtains, took ergot and lay in the candour of the dark.
Indeed, one could even argue that this "moral theology," marked by a morality of obligation under the influence of Nominalism and driven by the (low)
casuistical approach of the manuals, is the quintessential artifact created by the "modern" Catholic Church.
This could almost serve as a textbook definition for an early modern
casuistical notion called the doctrine of equivocation.
However, this limited conception is '
casuistical', merely 'safe-guarding good conscience' to the detriment of a larger context (Bernasconi 2008, p.
According to Chiragh 'Ali, the political and social reforms that he explained in the first and second parts of the book were neither
casuistical deductions, nor fortuitous interpretations, nor analogical constructions of the Qur'an.