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> Under casuistry, communities themselves deal with those accused of disturbing the community’s peace or of harming some of its members To think that this turn

> Under casuistry, communities themselves deal with those accused of disturbing the community’s peace or of harming some of its members To think that this turns out well displays either staggering ignorance or the naïvete of an infant. This is how you get lynchings, folks.

dbspin 6y ago
Well, the original meaning of casuistry is "the use of clever but unsound reasoning, especially in relation to moral questions; sophistry", which seems apt to this article. We have another name for what the article is describing, vigilantism. "Under casuistry, communities themselves deal with those accused of disturbing the community’s peace or of harming some of its members." I can think of few things more terrifying than a community seeking to impose 'justice' emboldened by the absence of law.
- voldacar 6y ago
  > Well, the original meaning of casuistry is "the use of clever but unsound reasoning, especially in relation to moral questions; sophistry", which seems apt to this article. Yeah very true. Before I clicked it I thought it would be about something like scholasticism, angels dancing on the head of a pin etc, but really the article itself was the casuistry all along. Kind of funny. > We have another name for what the article is describing, vigilantism. Vigilantism is essentially a meaner word of describing what the article describes in weirdly positive language. Russell conjugation and all that. Your vigilantism is my case-based community justice!
- pdonis 6y ago
  > I can think of few things more terrifying than a community seeking to impose 'justice' emboldened by the absence of law. I can think of few things more terrifying than "law" being imposed on citizens by legislators and bureaucrats who themselves have no skin in the game and suffer no consequences if the laws they impose are bad. We have another name for this too: tyranny.
  - voldacar 6y ago
    This is a good observation. There needs to be some kind of feedback loop to suppress the tyrannical bureaucratizing tendency of the modern state. It is obvious that our own society does not have any such feedback loop. However, the answer is not some kind of local unaccountable justice system where a judge basically rules based either on the will of the crowd or his own personal interests, and then calls it "community reconciliation" or some such bullshit. It's like the person who wrote the article literally never contemplated the reason for written law to exist in the first place. > The unpleasant truth is that if you live in a community whose members are not good people, you won't have good outcomes, no matter what kind of system you design. I think this is also basically undeniably true. But across all of history, I really don't know of any politcal system that had a noticable positive effect on the moral quality of the individual humans it ruled over. So this just leaves me with a sense of metahistorical pessimism.
    - pdonis 6y ago
      > the answer is not some kind of local unaccountable justice system There is no reason why a local justice system can't be accountable to the people who live in the community. But, as I said in another comment upthread, if the people in the community aren't good people, you aren't going to have good outcomes no matter what kind of system you set up, or what kind of laws you write. > It's like the person who wrote the article literally never contemplated the reason for written law to exist in the first place. Sure they did; they just recognize that written laws are attempts to achieve an unachievable ideal. It is impossible to capture "fairness" and "justice" in any written set of rules. There will always be human judgment required in individual cases, and human judgment is (a) subjective, and (b) depends on the humans doing the judging. If you have corrupt humans, you will get corrupt outcomes, and you can't fix that by writing laws, because corrupt people will just figure out loopholes in the laws, and writing guaranteed loophole-free laws is impossible.
      - bilbo0s 6y ago
        Again, the flaw is that local people can be as corrupt as non-local people. I'm having a difficult time ascertaining a difference. In either case, a man is obliged to live under the tyranny of potentially corrupt people. In fact, given the people, local or non-local, have power, it is a virtual certainty that there will be some level of corruption among them.
- throw0101a 6y ago
  > Well, the original meaning of casuistry is "the use of clever but unsound reasoning, especially in relation to moral questions; sophistry", which seems apt to this article. That is not the original meaning of casuistry. It is the meaning given to the word by casuistry's critics, or rather probably the critics of the Jesuits, as they used the technique a lot in the past. A 'fuller' defintion: > Casuistry (/ˈkæzjuɪstri/) is a process of reasoning that seeks to resolve moral problems by extracting or extending theoretical rules from a particular case, and reapplying those rules to new instances.[1] This method occurs in applied ethics and jurisprudence. The term is also commonly used as a pejorative to criticize the use of clever but unsound reasoning, especially in relation to moral questions (as in sophistry).[2] The word casuistry derives from the Latin noun casus ("case" or "occurrence"). […] > Certain kinds of casuistry were criticized by early Protestant theologians, because it was used in order to justify many of the abuses that they sought to reform. It was famously attacked by the Catholic and Jansenist philosopher Pascal, during the formulary controversy against the Jesuits, in his Provincial Letters as the use of rhetorics to justify moral laxity, which became identified by the public with Jesuitism; hence the everyday use of the term to mean complex and sophistic reasoning to justify moral laxity.[14] By the mid-18th century, "casuistry" had become a synonym for specious moral reasoning.[15] However, Puritans were known for their own development of casuistry.[citation needed] * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casuistry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casuistry This is/was a pretty good overview of the technique through ages: * https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520069602/the-abuse-of-casuistry https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520069602/the-abuse-of-casu... * https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/954645.The_Abuse_of_Casuistry https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/954645.The_Abuse_of_C... Old review: * https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/293127 https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/293127
pdonis 6y ago
> To think that this turns out well displays either staggering ignorance or the naïvete of an infant. Unfortunately, so does thinking that the alternative, trying to have governments spell out everything in advance and dictate outcomes from the top down without being able to take into account the circumstances of individual cases, turns out well. The unpleasant truth is that if you live in a community whose members are not good people, you won't have good outcomes, no matter what kind of system you design.
- bilbo0s 6y ago
  The unpleasant truth is that if you live in a community whose members are not good people, you won't have good outcomes Again, the quandary is that if you live in a community whose members are "good" people, you also won't have good outcomes. That's the nature of people. They are not "bad" or "good". They are just humans. Their actions are sometimes "bad", sometimes "good", but rarely are their actions consistently the one or the other. That's just the nature of being human. In fact, it's the entire reason we talk about "justice" in the first place.
  - voldacar 6y ago
    There is definitely such a thing as moral virtue or character. Maybe "bad" and "good" are too simplistic but there are definitely more virtuous and less virtuous humans
    - pdonis 6y ago
      > There is definitely such a thing as moral virtue or character. Yes, but those are subjective as well; there's no objective test for who is virtuous and who is not. Everyone has to judge that for themselves.
  - pdonis 6y ago
    > if you live in a community whose members are "good" people, you also won't have good outcomes I disagree. Historically there are plenty of examples of communities that have managed to get along for extended periods with reasonably good outcomes. What we humans don't (yet) have a good handle on is how to protect such communities against invasion from outside--other people outside the communities just won't leave them alone, but insist on trying to make them part of some larger social experiment.
emmelaich 6y ago
It's also how you get mercy. Non-local justice can get you genocide.
- bilbo0s 6y ago
  Non-local justice can get you genocide. As can local justice. Those too anxious to deal out their own interpretation of "justice" are generally deadly whether they live on the other side of a continent, or next door.
  - emmelaich 6y ago
    You're assuming that someone's own interpretation of justice differs majorly from someone else's justice. Both unnamed and anonymous. Which seems like a peculiar position when put like that. Would you like to add some qualifiers? I'm guessing that you equate other justice as laid down by by some benevolent and learned body of people. All senses of justice come from somewhere humble.

dbspin 6y ago

Well, the original meaning of casuistry is "the use of clever but unsound reasoning, especially in relation to moral questions; sophistry", which seems apt to this article. We have another name for what the article is describing, vigilantism. "Under casuistry, communities themselves deal with those accused of disturbing the community’s peace or of harming some of its members." I can think of few things more terrifying than a community seeking to impose 'justice' emboldened by the absence of law.

voldacar 6y ago
> Well, the original meaning of casuistry is "the use of clever but unsound reasoning, especially in relation to moral questions; sophistry", which seems apt to this article. Yeah very true. Before I clicked it I thought it would be about something like scholasticism, angels dancing on the head of a pin etc, but really the article itself was the casuistry all along. Kind of funny. > We have another name for what the article is describing, vigilantism. Vigilantism is essentially a meaner word of describing what the article describes in weirdly positive language. Russell conjugation and all that. Your vigilantism is my case-based community justice!
pdonis 6y ago
> I can think of few things more terrifying than a community seeking to impose 'justice' emboldened by the absence of law. I can think of few things more terrifying than "law" being imposed on citizens by legislators and bureaucrats who themselves have no skin in the game and suffer no consequences if the laws they impose are bad. We have another name for this too: tyranny.
- voldacar 6y ago
  This is a good observation. There needs to be some kind of feedback loop to suppress the tyrannical bureaucratizing tendency of the modern state. It is obvious that our own society does not have any such feedback loop. However, the answer is not some kind of local unaccountable justice system where a judge basically rules based either on the will of the crowd or his own personal interests, and then calls it "community reconciliation" or some such bullshit. It's like the person who wrote the article literally never contemplated the reason for written law to exist in the first place. > The unpleasant truth is that if you live in a community whose members are not good people, you won't have good outcomes, no matter what kind of system you design. I think this is also basically undeniably true. But across all of history, I really don't know of any politcal system that had a noticable positive effect on the moral quality of the individual humans it ruled over. So this just leaves me with a sense of metahistorical pessimism.
  - pdonis 6y ago
    > the answer is not some kind of local unaccountable justice system There is no reason why a local justice system can't be accountable to the people who live in the community. But, as I said in another comment upthread, if the people in the community aren't good people, you aren't going to have good outcomes no matter what kind of system you set up, or what kind of laws you write. > It's like the person who wrote the article literally never contemplated the reason for written law to exist in the first place. Sure they did; they just recognize that written laws are attempts to achieve an unachievable ideal. It is impossible to capture "fairness" and "justice" in any written set of rules. There will always be human judgment required in individual cases, and human judgment is (a) subjective, and (b) depends on the humans doing the judging. If you have corrupt humans, you will get corrupt outcomes, and you can't fix that by writing laws, because corrupt people will just figure out loopholes in the laws, and writing guaranteed loophole-free laws is impossible.
    - bilbo0s 6y ago
      Again, the flaw is that local people can be as corrupt as non-local people. I'm having a difficult time ascertaining a difference. In either case, a man is obliged to live under the tyranny of potentially corrupt people. In fact, given the people, local or non-local, have power, it is a virtual certainty that there will be some level of corruption among them.
throw0101a 6y ago
> Well, the original meaning of casuistry is "the use of clever but unsound reasoning, especially in relation to moral questions; sophistry", which seems apt to this article. That is not the original meaning of casuistry. It is the meaning given to the word by casuistry's critics, or rather probably the critics of the Jesuits, as they used the technique a lot in the past. A 'fuller' defintion: > Casuistry (/ˈkæzjuɪstri/) is a process of reasoning that seeks to resolve moral problems by extracting or extending theoretical rules from a particular case, and reapplying those rules to new instances.[1] This method occurs in applied ethics and jurisprudence. The term is also commonly used as a pejorative to criticize the use of clever but unsound reasoning, especially in relation to moral questions (as in sophistry).[2] The word casuistry derives from the Latin noun casus ("case" or "occurrence"). […] > Certain kinds of casuistry were criticized by early Protestant theologians, because it was used in order to justify many of the abuses that they sought to reform. It was famously attacked by the Catholic and Jansenist philosopher Pascal, during the formulary controversy against the Jesuits, in his Provincial Letters as the use of rhetorics to justify moral laxity, which became identified by the public with Jesuitism; hence the everyday use of the term to mean complex and sophistic reasoning to justify moral laxity.[14] By the mid-18th century, "casuistry" had become a synonym for specious moral reasoning.[15] However, Puritans were known for their own development of casuistry.[citation needed] * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casuistry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casuistry This is/was a pretty good overview of the technique through ages: * https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520069602/the-abuse-of-casuistry https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520069602/the-abuse-of-casu... * https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/954645.The_Abuse_of_Casuistry https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/954645.The_Abuse_of_C... Old review: * https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/293127 https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/293127

pdonis 6y ago

> To think that this turns out well displays either staggering ignorance or the naïvete of an infant. Unfortunately, so does thinking that the alternative, trying to have governments spell out everything in advance and dictate outcomes from the top down without being able to take into account the circumstances of individual cases, turns out well. The unpleasant truth is that if you live in a community whose members are not good people, you won't have good outcomes, no matter what kind of system you design.

bilbo0s 6y ago
The unpleasant truth is that if you live in a community whose members are not good people, you won't have good outcomes Again, the quandary is that if you live in a community whose members are "good" people, you also won't have good outcomes. That's the nature of people. They are not "bad" or "good". They are just humans. Their actions are sometimes "bad", sometimes "good", but rarely are their actions consistently the one or the other. That's just the nature of being human. In fact, it's the entire reason we talk about "justice" in the first place.
- voldacar 6y ago
  There is definitely such a thing as moral virtue or character. Maybe "bad" and "good" are too simplistic but there are definitely more virtuous and less virtuous humans
  - pdonis 6y ago
    > There is definitely such a thing as moral virtue or character. Yes, but those are subjective as well; there's no objective test for who is virtuous and who is not. Everyone has to judge that for themselves.
- pdonis 6y ago
  > if you live in a community whose members are "good" people, you also won't have good outcomes I disagree. Historically there are plenty of examples of communities that have managed to get along for extended periods with reasonably good outcomes. What we humans don't (yet) have a good handle on is how to protect such communities against invasion from outside--other people outside the communities just won't leave them alone, but insist on trying to make them part of some larger social experiment.

emmelaich 6y ago

It's also how you get mercy. Non-local justice can get you genocide.

bilbo0s 6y ago
Non-local justice can get you genocide. As can local justice. Those too anxious to deal out their own interpretation of "justice" are generally deadly whether they live on the other side of a continent, or next door.
- emmelaich 6y ago
  You're assuming that someone's own interpretation of justice differs majorly from someone else's justice. Both unnamed and anonymous. Which seems like a peculiar position when put like that. Would you like to add some qualifiers? I'm guessing that you equate other justice as laid down by by some benevolent and learned body of people. All senses of justice come from somewhere humble.