1994/06/01 by Mark G. Kuczewski · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · Health Professions · #Casuistry #Communitarianism #Epistemology #Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics #Ethics in medical practice #Law #Metaphysics #Moral psychology #Moral realism #Philosophical Ethics and Theory #Philosophy #Political science #Realism #Sociology
paper · doi:10.1353/ken.0.0082
openalex publication_date 1994/06/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
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.