Graduation Year
2011
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree
Ph.D.
Degree Granting Department
Philosophy
Major Professor
Stephen P. Turner, Ph.D
Committee Member
Roger Ariew, Ph.D.
Committee Member
Kenneth N. Cissna, Ph.D.
Committee Member
Thomas Williams, Ph.D.
Keywords
ethics, cases, principles, taxonomies, conscience
Abstract
The general purpose of this dissertation is to explore casuistry--case-based reasoning--as a discredited, rehabilitated, and, most importantly, persistent form of moral reasoning. Casuistry offers a much needed corrective to principle-based approaches. I offer a defense of a "principle-modest" casuistry and explore the epistemology of casuistry, describing the prerequisite knowledge required for casuistry. I conclude by arguing that casuistry is best understood as a neo-premodernist approach to moral reasoning.
Scholar Commons Citation
Mercadante, Richard Arthur, "The Persistence of Casuistry: a Neo-premodernist Approach to Moral Reasoning" (2011). USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations.
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/etd/3245
