What is "casuistry"

Casuistry \Cas"u*ist*ry\, a.

1. 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.

   The consideration of these nice and puzzling question in the science of ethics has given rise, in modern times, to a particular department of it, distinguished by the title of casuistry.
   --Stewart.

   Casuistry in the science of cases (i.e., oblique deflections from the general rule).
   --De Quincey.

2. Sophistical, equivocal, or false reasoning or teaching in regard to duties, obligations, and morals. [1913 Webster] ||

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

1. n. argumentation that is specious or excessively subtle and intended to be misleading

2. moral philosophy based on the application of general ethical principles to resolve moral dilemmas

Casuistry , or case-based reasoning, is a method in applied ethics and jurisprudence, often characterised as a critique of principle- or rule-based reasoning. The word "casuistry" is derived from the Latin casus (meaning "case").

Casuistry is reasoning used to resolve moral problems by extracting or extending theoretical rules from particular instances and applying these rules to new instances. The term is also commonly used as a pejorative to criticize the use of clever but unsound reasoning (alleging implicitly the inconsistent—or outright specious—misapplication of rule to instance), especially in relation to moral questions (see sophistry).

The agreed meaning of "casuistry" is in flux. The term can be used either to describe a presumably acceptable form of reasoning or a form of reasoning that is inherently unsound and deceptive. Most or all philosophical dictionaries list the neutral sense as the first or only definition. On the other hand, the Oxford English Dictionary states that the word "[o]ften (and perhaps originally) applied to a quibbling or evasive way of dealing with difficult cases of duty." Its textual references, except for certain technical usages, are consistently pejorative ("Casuistry‥destroys by Distinctions and Exceptions, all Morality, and effaces the essential Difference between Right and Wrong"). Most online dictionaries list a pejorative meaning as the primary definition before a neutral one, though Merriam-Webster lists the neutral one first. In journalistic usage, the pejorative use is ubiquitous.