casuistry the case-analysis approach to the interpretation of general moral rules. Casuistry starts with paradigm cases of how and when a given general moral rule should be applied, and then reasons by analogy to cases in which the proper application of the rule is less obvious – e.g., a case in which lying is the only way for a priest not to betray a secret revealed in confession. The point of considering the series of cases is to ascertain the morally relevant similarities and differences between cases. Casuistry’s heyday was the first half of the seventeenth century. Reacting against casuistry’s popularity with the Jesuits and against its tendency to qualify general moral rules, Pascal penned a polemic against casuistry from which the term never recovered (see his Provincial Letters, 1656). But the kind of reasoning to which the term refers is flourishing in contemporary practical ethics. B.W.H.