[f. CASUIST + -RY. App. at first contemptuous = ‘the casuist’s trade’; cf. sophistry, Jesuitry, foolery. A term of more respectful application would prob. have been casuism: Fr. has la casuistique, as if ‘casuistics.’]
The science, art or reasoning of the casuist; that part of Ethics which resolves cases of conscience, applying the general rules of religion and morality to particular instances in which ‘circumstances alter cases,’ or in which there appears to be a conflict of duties. Often (and perhaps originally) applied to a quibbling or evasive way of dealing with difficult cases of duty; sophistry.
1725. Pope, Rape Lock, V. 122. Cages for gnats … and tomes of casuistry.
1736. Bolingbroke, Patriot. (1749), 170. Casuistry … destroys, by distinctions and exceptions, all morality, and effaces the essential difference between right and wrong.
1836. Penny Cycl., VI. 359. The science of casuistry… has been termed, not inaptly, the ‘art of quibbling with God.’
1841. Emerson, Lect. the Times, Wks. (Bohn), II. 254. The Temperance-question … is a gymnastic training to the casuistry and conscience of the time.
1862. Mill, Utilit., 37. Self-deception and dishonest casuistry.
1887. Fowler, Princ. Morals, II. vi. 247. Granted that duties may clash, or that general rules may be modified by special circumstances, it is surely most important to determine beforehand, as far as we can, what those circumstances are, and, in the case of clashing duties, which should yield to the other. Now this, and this alone, is the task which ‘Casuistry’ or the attempt to ‘resolve cases of conscience’ proposes to itself.
2. A register or record of (medical) cases.
1883. J. W. Legg, in Barthol. Hosp. Rep., XIX. 202. Nor can I find any similar case in the casuistry of pemphigus as recorded in the year-books.
