casuistry
1
9.9
- noun
- /ˈkæʒuɪstri/
:
sophistería
- But perhaps Colson's loyal troops, like the Catholic Jesuits in the seventeenth century, used some complex reasoning (casuistry) to justify moral laxity.
Examples
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What is it about Jesuit casuistry that's so enrages the seeker as he goes about his interviews?
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In discussions about morality, his tendency toward casuistry made it difficult to find a clear answer to the dilemma.
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However, it is at least a step above the circus of casuistry that is more typical when these sorts of things come up.
Blog text (28) -
Far from "opposing Moses and the law," Jesus constantly defends the law of Moses against all attempts to tame it through casuistry.
Blog text (33) -
Pulling himself together with a distinct effort of will, he said slowly, "That is the most outlandish piece of casuistry I've heard in a lifetime of theological study."
Fiction book (1997) -
The Parisian pastors, many of them graduates of the Faculty, demanded the condemnation of a defense of casuistry published in 1657.
Academic text (1992) -
It is mainly because he specializes in this sort of rhetoric, pickled in bigotry and casuistry, that the Independent is so anxious not to lose him.
Academic text (2011) -
To discover and justify these rights in detail, as I and others have done (Pilon 1979; Epstein 2003), we would need to delve into the complex issues of moral epistemology and legal casuistry, and this is not the occasion for that.
Academic text (2018) -
The professor warned his students about the dangers of casuistry in ethical debates, emphasizing that it often leads to misleading conclusions.
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She recognized the casuistry in his arguments, realizing that they were based more on clever language than on solid principles.
Synonyms
7
9.8
Use of clever but false arguments to trick people
1
9.9
A clever but wrong argument used to trick people
1
9.8
A quality that comes from wrong ideas or bad thinking
Very complicated, tricky argument that tries to hide the truth
A way of arguing that focuses on small unimportant differences and confuses the issue
Antonyms
How Fallacious
Surface Forms
Morphology
Etymology
Casuistry comes from the Latin word casus meaning 'case'. Because people sometimes used clever, small arguments about many 'cases' to avoid a direct answer, the word came to mean tricky or misleading moral reasoning today.