Note critice asupra „noii” cazuistici propuse de Stephen Toulmin şi Albert Jonsen
Critical notes on the “new” casuistry proposed by Stephen Toulmin and Albert Jonsen

Summary/Abstract: Stephen Toulmin and Albert Jonsen are two authors who played an important role in the rediscovery of applied ethics toward the end of the twentieth century, primarily through their reinterpretation of casuistry, a sophisticated moral practice from the Middle Ages. This type of moral reasoning, used by Catholic priests and theologians, was re adapted by the two authors as a practical solution for a world confronted, on the one hand, with urgent and controversial problems in fields such as medicine, law, economics, business, and public policy, and, on the other hand, with a pluralistic and dynamic perspective on the relationship between moral values, the individual, and society. The present paper argues that, although Toulmin and Jonsen justifiably emphasize the analysis of concrete cases and particularities – under the influence of Aristotelian thought and the casuistic tradition – their view of moral reasoning becomes problematic when it completely eliminates any form of abstraction from the process of moral decision making. Their critique of the ethical rationalism dominant in recent decades paradoxically leads to another difficulty, already identified in the seventeenth century by Blaise Pascal in his own critique of casuistry: the risk of slipping into moral relativism.

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