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  1. casuistry love

Definitions

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

  1. n. Specious or excessively subtle reasoning intended to rationalize or mislead.
  2. n. The determination of right and wrong in questions of conduct or conscience by analyzing cases that illustrate general ethical rules.

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

  1. n. In ethics, the solution of special problems of right and duty by the application of general ethical principles or theological dogmas; the answering of questions of conscience. In the history of Jewish and Christian theology, casuistry has often degenerated into hair-splitting and sophistical arguments, in which questions of right and wrong were construed to meet selfish aims.
  2. n. Hence Over-subtle and dishonest reasoning; sophistry.
  3. n. In medicine, a recent, rare, and improper use for casuistics.

Wiktionary

  1. n. The process of answering practical questions via interpretation of rules or cases that illustrate such rules, especially in ethics.
  2. n. pejorative A specious argument designed to defend an action or feeling.

GNU Webster's 1913

  1. adj. The science or doctrine of dealing with cases of conscience, of resolving questions of right or wrong in conduct, or determining the lawfulness or unlawfulness of what a man may do by rules and principles drawn from the Scriptures, from the laws of society or the church, or from equity and natural reason; the application of general moral rules to particular cases.
  2. adj. Sophistical, equivocal, or false reasoning or teaching in regard to duties, obligations, and morals.

WordNet 3.0

  1. n. moral philosophy based on the application of general ethical principles to resolve moral dilemmas
  2. n. argumentation that is specious or excessively subtle and intended to be misleading

Etymologies

  1. From casuist +‎ -ry. First recorded use in 1725. (Wiktionary)
  2. From casuist. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)

Examples

  • “Is not what they call casuistry a science among Roman”

    Clara Hopgood

  • “This casuistry is too much for Cromwell, who loses his composure for the first and only time:”

    The Men Who Made England

  • “We can see how and why the word casuistry received the particular coloring with which it is now connected.”

    CASUISTRY

  • “The word casuistry (literally “concern with individual cases”) has been used in three different, if connected meanings.”

    CASUISTRY

  • “For we repeat -- that the name, the word casuistry, may be evaded, but the thing cannot; nor _is_ it evaded in our daily conversations.”

    Theological Essays and Other Papers — Volume 1

  • “I’ve always found Catholic thought (e.g. the theology and philosophy of Aquinas) to be very legalistic, and to frequently engage in casuistry [in the non-pejorative sense of case-based reasoning], which closely resembles the common-law method in the U.S.”

    The Volokh Conspiracy » Why Catholics and Jews?

  • “And this is what we mean by casuistry, which is the application of a moral principle to the _cases_ arising in human life.”

    Theological Essays and Other Papers — Volume 2

  • “But this casuistry, as well as lying open to the distortion Hogg attacks (for private interest can be a kind of casuistry too), forfeits Luther's clear point about religious support for secularism.”

    Post-Secular Conviviality

  • “By a casuistry which is now elevated into an economic principle, but which has no defenders outside the realm of banking, a warehouseman who deals in money is subject to a diviner law: the banker is free to use for his private interest and profit the money left in trust ....”

    Borrowing from Peter to Pay Paul: The Wall Street Ponzi Scheme Called Fractional Reserve Banking

  • “But an awful lot of it consists of what can be called in the purely technical sense a kind of casuistry, an application of certain moral systems or principles or theories to discussing what we should think about abortion.”

    Bernard Williams

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synonyms (5)

Words with the same meaning

  1. prevarication
  1. rationalization
  1. excuse
  1. legalism
  1. casuistics

hypernyms (5)

Words that are more generic or abstract

  1. argument
  1. line of reasoning
  1. logical argument
  1. argumentation
  1. line

same context (14)

Words that are found in similar contexts

  1. deontology
  2. utilitarianism
  1. sophistry
  2. plead
  1. chicane
  2. tergiversation
  1. subterfuge
  2. wiles
  1. sophism
  2. misrepresentation
  1. misrepresentations
  2. insinuations
  1. equivocation
  2. duplicity

reverse dictionary (11)

Words that contain this word in their definition

  1. probabilism
  2. casuist
  1. casuistic
  2. Jesuit
  1. case-divinity
  2. casuistics
  1. case divinity
  2. casuistical
  1. moral theology
  2. resolve
  1. solution

tags (1)

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  1. philosophy

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Comments

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  • ThatsBaloneyMan "Trim's casuistry and address, under the cover of his low bow, prevented all suspicion in my uncle Toby..." ---Tristram Shandy, Vol. IV, Ch. XVIII Mar 16, 2013

  • chained_bear "He felt the ampulla in his cheek—undying mortal sin except by casuistry—and although he had long thought prayer in time of danger indecent, prayers sang in his mind, the long hypnotic cadences of plainchant imploring protection for his love."
    —Patrick O'Brian, The Surgeon's Mate, 366 Feb 9, 2008

  • plumpesdenken Hitchens on the casuistry of Chomsky in blaming the World Bank. p. 423 Dec 3, 2006

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‘casuistry’ has been looked up 3936 times, loved by 15 people, added to 70 lists, commented on 3 times, and has a Scrabble score of 14.