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Casuistry and Its Communitarian Critics
- Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 4, Number 2, June 1994
- pp. 99-116
- 10.1353/ken.0.0082
- Article
- Additional Information
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Communitarian critics have derided case-based reasoning for ignoring the need to arrive at a shared hierarchy of goods prior to case resolution. They claim that such a failure means that casuistry depends on either a naive metaphysical realism or an ethical conventionalism. Casuistry does embrace a certain unobjectionable moral realism and can require appeals to narrative histories, but despite this dependence on the surrounding culture, casuists possess a way to remain critical of society through the concept of practical wisdom and the use of a moral taxonomy. Therefore, casuistry's viability depends upon the existence and employment of this Aristotelian virtue. Furthermore, the casuistry that emerges is a sophisticated type of communitarianism rather than a free-standing method.