The Abuse of Casuistry: A History of Moral Reasoning (review)

634 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 28:4 OCTOBER 1990 Albert R. Jonsen and Stephen Toulmin. The Abuse of Casuistry: A History of Moral Reasoning. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988. Pp. ix + 420. $45.oo. The genuine interest of this book makes it regrettable that the subtitle may mislead. This is not a history of moral reasoning as such and the authors never pretend otherwise . It is a treatment of some important episodes in the history of casuistical reasoning , designed to elicit its salient characteristics, and a defense of the use of casuistry as a method of moral reasoning. This defense involves a philosophical critique of what the authors take to be the dominant theses of moral philosophy since Sidgwick, theses which assign an importance to appeals to universally applicable rules which ought instead, on the view defended by Jonsen and Toulmin, to be accorded to the study of particular cases. The historical parts of the book focus upon the late medieval and early modern periods of European moral thought. Particular attention is paid to rebutting Pascal's attack upon casuistry. The precursors of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century casuistry are reviewed in a highly selective outline of the relevant parts of Greek, Roman, Jewish, and patristic thought, and a coda to the history is provided by a brief account of how casuistry fell into disrepute. The early historical sections of the book suffer greatly from too much compression. The unfortunate results range from grossly inadequate treatments of important topics---for example, the cursory glance at Talmud--through bald assertions of what is in fact highly debatable, to occasional misrepresentations. The last of these includes the statement that Aristotle's moral theory asserts "the absence of 'essences' from the world of human affairs and ethical deliberation" (67). Yet none of this detracts from the importance of what follows. Three subjects of casuistical investigation in the medieval and early modern periods are discussed: usury, perjury, and killing in defense of one's honor. All three discussions are full of interesting material and apposite comment. There is a large dependence upon secondary sources and a certain partisanship is evident in the narration. But this makes for liveliness. What these studies provide is a basis for a thorough and sustained attack on Pascal's critique of casuistry, and an analysis of what was at issue between Pascal and his Jesuit opponents, and for this alone the book would be valuable. In the latter part of the book there is less history and more philosophy, although accounts of the decline of casuistry and of the rise of the type of moral philosophy abhorred by the authors, a rise signalled by the change in the title of Whewelrs chair at Cambridge from the Knightsbridge Professorship of Casuistical Divinity to the Knightsbridge Professorship of Moral Philosophy, contribute significantly to the philosophical discussion. The authors endorse at least four positions concerning the application of rules to particular cases. The first, which they recognize to be uncontroversial, is that a rule may need to be extended or reformulated in order to cover some hitherto unrecognized or new type of case (329-3o). The second is that rules are to be derived from and framed in terms of judgments about particular cases (33o-31), a position anticipated by Adam Smith (whom the authors do not mention). The third is that there is an BOOKS RECEIVED 635 alternative morality to the morality of rules, the morality of "equitable discretion," and that which morality it is appropriate to follow is a matter of social context (291). The fourth is that there are alternative moralities of rules, that the principles to be derived from such abstract theories as those of Kant and Bentham provide not rival sets of rules, but instead sets of rules each of which has a limited scope (293), so that there are particular cases in which it is right to behave as a Benthamite and others in which it would be right to act as a Kantian. And, if I understand the authors aright, the decision as to which type of rule to apply in a particular case cannot itself be rule-governed. What...