NEW!

"Casuistry's Philosophical Niche"
-- the first of seven articles
looking at the subject of
Casuistry from various angles,
now posted in the "Casuistry Primer".

Feature #1 (07-16-00 post)

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Suppose that you are a member of a community that has a set of legal and moral principles that is sound (every judgment the system endorses is right), complete (every problem is resolvable), and eagerly obeyed (the members of your community, a highly moral and socially conscientious people, fully accept the legal and moral principles laid down by the community). Would such a community be vastly morally superior to the sorts of communities that exist in our inefficient, corrupt, dog-eat-dog world?

Surprisingly, the answer is no. The reason is that, given a handful -- or library full -- of moral and legal principles, both communities face the same day-to-day practical problem: given some set of accepted general moral principles, how do we figure out what the right thing is for us to do in this particular situation?

Take the case of a mid-Eastern family some three-thousand years ago who, despite living in a community with a widely-acclaimed and well-endorsed moral code, one day faced an acute moral dilemma. Among the general principles of that humble community were: (1) "Honor your parents", (2) "Observe the sabbath", and (3) "Do not kill."

Now, as it happened, the grandfather in this family was gravely ill and was badly in need of some water. The ill man's daughter, heeding precept (1), went out to the well to fetch a cup of water for her father. Unfortunately, her son, seeing that she was about to do work (fetching water) on the sabbath (which fell on that very day), came forward to stop her from breaking precept (2). Surprised, the woman fell into the well. Now the son was faced with pulling his mother out of the well, following precept (1) but breaking (2), or leaving his mother to drown, remaining true to (2) while violating (1). Seeing the boy puzzle over his dilemma, the neighbor, a legal scholar, pointed out to him that to permit someone to drown was a violation of the spirit of precept (3). In fact, the scholar mused aloud, even if the boy's mother drowned, there was still the matter of the grandfather, who would soon perish without his cup of water. At this time the scholar's brother, a moral scholar, pointed out that that two wrongs never make a right, and that breaking the sabbath simply was wrong -- just as wrong as breaking the principle against allowing people to die, or against dishonoring one's parents. He added that the cause of the moral dilemma was the mother's failure in the first place to set aside water that previous evening. But the legal scholar interrupted his brother to say that the fault of the mother should not be visited upon her father, who was not to blame. Exasperated, the boy asked the two wise men what he should do, given that his mother was drowning in the well and his grandfather dying of thirst on the sabbath. The two brothers, appreciating the gravity and urgency of the situation, conferred for many minutes. After a quarter of an hour, the desperate boy tugged at the sleeve of the moral scholar, who turned to him and said: "Well, so far we agree that if you had not been aware that your mother was drowning you would not have been morally obliged to save her."

Now there are basically two instinctive responses to this sort of nonsense. The first is the Moral Relativist approach we see offered up by Libertarians, Nihilists, and advocates of some version of Rousseau's Back-To-Nature movement. The thinking is that there was never any problem in the first place, back in Eden, the age of Innocence, or The Good Old Days. The problem arose from attempts to coordinate human behavior in a rational, predictable and organized manner ("Big Government" is a current buzzword referring to The Problem). The remedy, of course, is for everyone to abandon ethical "systems" altogether. John D. Caputo, in his Against Ethics presents offers one of the more intriguing and poetic examples of radical moral individualism. The drawback to this approach is that making ethics an independent, individualized, solitary, personal effort defeats the very purpose of ethics, which is to resolve conflicts that arise between two or more members of a society. It also completely overlooks another significant fact: not all moral difficulties arise from conflict between Mankind and Nature, or The World, or The Absolute and The Necessary. It makes no difference to the Forces of Naturewhich side of the road motorists drive on; it does matter to members of a automotive society whether or not everyone will agree to drive on the same side of the road, whichever side is picked. Such an agreement exists between members of that society (a different society, or the same society at a different time, may pick the other side of the road to drive on), and does not matter to, or require an appeal to, Nature, The Almighty , The Real, or The Absolute.

The other, more conservative approach, is equally useless in resolving preactical nmoral dilemmas. Here the strategy is, if the system cannot solve the problem, beef up the system. Tighten the rules, escalate the punishments, threats, incentives and appeals to the wrath of God, and create more laws, or fewer laws, or a whole new set of laws -- as if the body of moral or legal rules were the only conceivable source of moral dilemmas. (In fact it is not even the major source, as I hope to illustrate in a later essay. One can encounter a plethora of moral dilemmas given a perfect set of moral or legal rules).

Both views tend to exploit the same two strategies: create a system of rules that is flawless, comprehensive and idiot-proof (preferably no more than one page of eight-grade reading-level text), while at the same time allowing vast personal freedom to do as one personally sees fit without interference.or intervention from the oppressive "leviathan" we labored so hard to create in order to rule over us.

Both approaches also ignore the fact that the underlying basis and motivation for Ethics is not some abstract concept, but actual human practice. Ethical theories, like theories in physics or mathematics or biology or economics do not pop out of nowhere. They are, in fact systemizations and generalizations of particular solutions that have been found to successfully resolve particular questions. Thousands of years before the Pythagorean School came up with the general formula "A squared plus B squared equals C squared", some Egyptian engineer came up with "three cubits square plus four cubits square equals five cubits square" (a cubit being the roughy and ready measurement of the length of the adult male Egyptian forearm from the inside of the elbow to the tip of the middle finger). In the same way, the generalities of ethical theory evolve out of the particulars of ethical practice in much the same way that general theories in other sciences are evolved from empirical observations, controlled (and sometimes uncontolled) experiements, field testing, and a great deal of tinkering. Albert Jonsen and Stephen Toulmin's witty motto should be taken quite seriously: "Casuists are mechanics, not engineers" (The Abuse of Casuistry ). After a century of what Mary Warnock (Ethics Since 1900 ) criticizes as sterile and unproductive Ethical "Formalism" -- ethical theories which are so general that they have no practical application -- the work of Jonsen and Toulmin outlines the spirit in which 21st Century Ethical Theory should be approached. As in rocketry, immunology, urban planning and a host of other human practices, the theoretician pulls together the observations and insights acquired and accumulated by the practician. The mechanic works on the solution to making this engine work, the engineer uses the results to understand how engines work, and those results are used by the mechanic to make his engine better.

This site can be thought of as a kind ofcasuistic laboratory / workshop in which ethical facts are discovered, explored, analyzed and tested. The aim of this site is to come up with individual answers to particular practical ethical questions (i.e.casuistry) and, even more importantly, general methodologies for answering broader ethical questions (meta-casuistry), in a correct, rational, consistent and timely manner. Not just any answer will do, for the answer must be a function and reflection of the general principles, aims and goals of the society in which the moral dilemma arises. Ultimately, Ethics is the theoretical description and analysis of phenomena that are intimately linked with real-world objects (people), and so ultimately the grounding and results of ethical inquiry lie in the real, practical world. Otherwise, a moral skeptic could reasonably argue that there really is no practical answer at all to the aggrieved boy's moral dilemma if ethicists, employing the general principles of their society, cannot answer the boy's ubiquitous moral question: "What should I do?" before his mother drowns and his grandfather dies of thirst, and the question then becomes moot. --RDB