[From an online discussion regarding casuistry, its necessity, etc.]
[Remarks to Brian Besong:]
By the by, Brian, we're definitely on the same page on a number of things. I was just reading your review of Schuessler's text, which I was so glad to see out. (I was doing work on this domain a year or so ago and missed it. We're getting it at our seminary library, so I look forward to reading it. It looks like, finally, there is something to cite other than Deman's work.) It's funny, I come from a Thomist tradition that's hard on the casuists (not just S. Pinckaers, concerning whom I am tepid in my admiration, but Garrigou, Labourdette, Gardeil, et al. too), but I actually share with you the need to reinvigorate proper casuistry in moral theology. (I would say that it actually should be part of each and every treatment of a particular virtue, with general remarks in the Treatise on Conscience—envisioned as the tail end of the Sub-Treatise on Morality in the Treatise on Human acts, and also with some additional remarks in the Treatise on Prudence.)
Also, I feel it wretched that the entirety of probabilism is thrown under the bus by so many Thomists. There are some real dead-ends in the obsessiveness of that era, and the way that the various treatises of moral theology got all messed up. But I just find it romanticism to say that we should hop back over them through history as though there is nothing to be learned therefrom. One of the various shifts in the modern perspective is the crystalization of the notion of "probability." However, I don't think that one needs to make it as new as someone like Hacking does. It has its connection to "topicity" (as Gardeil and others saw), etc. But... I need to read Byrne's text on this, and reread more deeply the work on opinion in Aristotle, by Regis.
[Followup with a good question from a fellow Thomist follower online:]
We are in profound agreement. Although _merely_ knowing the "line" at which one sins would make for a morality that is quite a low bar (and ultimately non-Christian, in my opinion), what ascetical author does not devote time to decrying the sins that one must not fall into? Casuistic analysis is just a more analytical method of doing this. (The downside, of course, is that such general analysis remains, ultimately, at a distance from concrete action. Nonetheless, it provides many cases for consultation and reflection so that one can find the basic boundaries—and, often, in clearer cases, rather certain guidance.) In fact, the complexity of contemporary life—as you so well connect to issues of material cooperation with evil (so rife throughout our experience)—really require a rich awareness of general "cases."
Then, however, there is "positive casuistry" in the sense of analyzing acts that tend toward perfection more fully. Here too: what ascetical or spiritual author does not take up this kind of discussion? Why should it be excluded from moral theology and moral philosophy. The unique thing about moral analysis is that it is at least remotely an influence on action. Thus, one should readily pass over into the praise of great acts, as well as into analysis of _why_ this or that act (though still rather generic, for this is not prudence) is to be praised (or, in the case of sin, blamed).
I think that scrupulosity can be avoided so long as one is guided by a good confessor / director (or parent...) to remember that ultimately the virtue of prudence must be personally operative, not merely as applying universal rules (for, as Fr. Gardeil so wonderfully said, there is no prudence written out on paper - and Garrigou-Lagrange is actually just about as strong on this point, something that probably would surprise many on both sides of the Garrigou divide), but as actively trying to live out the life of the virtues. Scrupulosity is a vice (most often "temerity" in Aquinas's lexicon - a sin against "good counsel" in the task of prudence), not a virtue. I'm not sure that we should cater to the quivering problems caused by a vice while trying to figure out what _per se_ belongs to a sound moral methodology. That being said—lest I be thought heartless!—we do need to think about what is most important "from our perspective" when working out a methodology (for every science is "tuned" to our human condition, passing from what we know then pushing onward to what is actually more explanatory and "knowable in itself"). In my opinion, the most important explanatory casuistic phase is when we show cases of perfection, for that helps us to see most clearly why it is that vices / sins are evil, precisely for falling short of human perfection in a given set of circumstances. However, the first explanatory thing we need is likely to see why some course of action is evil / sinful. This orients us like a finger pointing toward the virtue in question.
Now, as a general rule of thumb, however, I do think it a mistake to present casuistry solely as a list of sins to be avoided. (The overall framework of the probabilism questions did lead to this, unfortunately.) This is perhaps more likely to breed temerity, for it presents the moral landscape like a large domain filled with dangers to be avoided, rather than as the material for making the love of God shine forth in the midst of the circumstances of life.
Well... There are my rambling thoughts. Now, I best be off to work!
I think that the following quote from Maritain's essay, "Action: The Perfection of Human Life" (found in _Existence and the Existent_) perfectly balances at once the limits of casuistry and yet also its enduring relevance. (He's not directly addressing it in these terms, but it is "underneath the hood" in my opinion.):
With regard to our contemporary atheistic existentialists, it is not with anguish and sorrow, and with knowledge of its value (like Kierkegaard), but with the pleasure of barbarians and with out knowing what they do, that, along with essence, they sacrifice the ethical universal. In truth, they seem to think that if there were a system of moral rules, these would automatically apply to particular cases, from which it would follow that all morality is defective because it should suffice—but does not— for a young man hesitating between breaking his mother’s heart and joining the Forces of Fighting France to consult a dictionary of precepts to know what to do. In short, they imagine that morality dispenses with conscience, and substitutes its rules both for the invincibly personal judgment of that flexible and subtle faculty purchased at so high a price, as well as for the judgment (also invincibly personal and irreducible to any sort of science) of the virtue of prudence, which is purchased at an even more disturbing price. They replace all that by the chasm of the Pythian oracle because they have eliminated reason and hold the form of morality to consist in pure liberty alone. Let the perplexed young man listen at the cave of this oracle; his liberty itself will tell him how to make use of it.
And let him not be given advice! The least advice would risk blighting his liberty, preventing the beautiful serpent from issuing from the cave. The liberty of these philosophers of liberty is indeed singularly fragile. In uprooting it from reason, they have themselves made it weaker. As for us, we do not fear advice for human liberty. Fill it with as much advice as you like—we know that it is strong enough to digest them all, and that it lives on rational motivations which it manipulates for its purposes and of which it alone knows the efficacy. In sum, by suppressing generality and universal law one sup presses liberty, leaving only chaos thrusting out of the night it resembles. Because in suppressing generality and universal law one suppresses reason, in which liberty has its root (cf. De veritate, q. 24, a. 2: “Totius libertatis radix est in ratione constituta”) and from which so vast a desire flows into man that no explanation on earth and no objective solicitation, except Beatitude seen face to face, suffices to determine it.