How the casuists excuse anything
How does a system meant to guide conscience end by permitting a duel, a theft, even a killing? Pascal puts the Jesuits' moral manuals on trial using their own words.
The heart of the Letters is an attack on Jesuit casuistry, the case-by-case reasoning by which almost any act could be licensed. Two devices draw Pascal's fire. Probable opinions held that if any respected authority allowed a course, one might follow it however dubious it seemed. Directing the intention held that a forbidden deed became permissible if one aimed the mind at a lawful end, so a duel was defence of honour, a theft a taking of one's due. Pascal quotes the casuists' own manuals and lets them convict themselves, charging that a morality so pliable dissolves the very idea of sin.
- casuistry
- ethics
- intention
- homicide
- sin
- conscience
- moral authority
- agency
- justice
- religious authority
Enter a dialogue
- Casuists you quote debate how often a person must love God: once a year, once in five years, only at death. What became of the commandment?
- Your narrator's Jansenist friend admits these loose views may belong to a few individuals, not the whole Jesuit order. Why do you hold the order itself to account?
- A casuist rules that a servant who feels underpaid may take from his master's goods enough to make up the difference. Where does that reasoning stop?
- The Gospel says to give alms from one's surplus. A casuist rules that money kept to better one's station is no surplus. Is that reading or evasion?
- A casuist says a deed counts as sin only if the sinner stopped to think of God. Does the man who never thinks of God sin least?