MAR 25
- So what should one do? One should help people, and take care of the world. Those two are obvious. But is there anything else? When I ask that, the answer that pops up is Make good new things.
- Another reason I like this phrasing is that it biases us toward creation. It causes us to prefer the kind of ideas that are naturally seen as making things rather than, say, making critical observations about things other people have made. Those are ideas too, and sometimes valuable ones, but it's easy to trick oneself into believing they're more valuable than they are. Criticism seems sophisticated, and making new things often seems awkward, especially at first; and yet it's precisely those first steps that are most rare and valuable.
- How to live + what to do: The traditional answers were answers to a slightly different question. They were answers to the question of how to be, rather than what to do. The audience didn't have a lot of choice about what to do. The audience up till recent centuries was the landowning class, which was also the political class. They weren't choosing between doing physics and writing novels. Their work was foreordained: manage their estates, participate in politics, fight when necessary. It was ok to do certain other kinds of work in one's spare time, but ideally one didn't have any. Cicero's De Officiis is one of the great classical answers to the question of how to live, and in it he explicitly says that he wouldn't even be writing it if he hadn't been excluded from public life by recent political upheavals.
- Prodigy more than a model: Archimedes knew that he was the first to prove that a sphere has 2/3 the volume of the smallest enclosing cylinder and was very pleased about it. But you don't find ancient writers urging their readers to emulate him. They regarded him more as a prodigy than a model.
- because the vein of people making new things ran at right angles to the social hierarchy
- Indeed this pattern is so common that you can use it as a recipe: if you're excited about some kind of work that's not considered prestigious and you can explain what everyone else is overlooking about it, then this is not merely a kind of work that's ok to do, but one to seek out.
- But this seems one of those casuistries people invented to evade the stern requirements of religion: you could spend time studying math instead of praying or performing acts of charity because otherwise you were rejecting a gift God had given you. A useful casuistry no doubt, but we don't need it.
Perfect. Let’s get metaphorical and historical — buckle up.
🌀 Metaphor: Casuistry is like moral duct tape
Imagine you’re trying to fix a leaky pipe — not with proper tools, but with duct tape.
Casuistry is what people use when a strict rule or moral principle doesn't quite fit real life. Instead of throwing the whole system out, they reach for duct tape — clever reasoning — to patch it up just enough to keep the system going.
Sometimes it works beautifully. Other times… it just gets messier.
📜 History of Casuistry: From noble roots to shady reputation
1. 🏛️ Origins in Catholic moral theology (13th–17th century)
- Casuistry started as a serious method for resolving real, complicated ethical problems.
- Say someone stole bread to feed their starving child — should that be treated the same as regular theft?
- Casuists (usually priests or scholars) would compare "cases" to moral principles to find a reasoned solution.
2. ✝️ Jesuit scholars made it big
- The Jesuits were famous for their detailed moral reasoning. They'd say, "Well, it depends…" and go deep into situational ethics.
- It became a practical way for confessors to guide people through tough moral choices.
3. ⚔️ Then… came the backlash
- In the 17th century, critics — most famously Blaise Pascal in his Provincial Letters — accused the Jesuits of using casuistry to excuse sin.
- Pascal mocked them for offering overly lenient moral loopholes, calling it moral corruption dressed as reason.
4. 📉 Reputation goes downhill
- By the 18th century, "casuistry" had a bad name. It came to mean sophistry — clever reasoning that hides the truth or avoids real moral responsibility.
5. 🧠 Modern revival?
- Today, some philosophers and ethicists are revisiting it — especially in medical ethics, where clear-cut rules don’t always work.
- But the word still carries a whiff of manipulation.
🧠 TL;DR:
Casuistry began as serious ethical problem-solving.
It became infamous for slippery justifications.
Now it lives in that gray area between moral insight and mental gymnastics.
Want an example from modern life — maybe politics, business, or something juicy?