from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
- n. A person who is expert in or given to casuistry.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
- n. A person who resolves cases of conscience or moral duty.
- n. Someone who attempts to specify exact and precise rules for the direction of every circumstance of behavior
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English
- n. One who is skilled in, or given to, casuistry.
- intransitive v. To play the casuist.
from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- To play the part of a casuist.
- n. One versed in or using casuistry; one who studies and resolves cases of conscience, or nice points regarding conduct.
- n. Hence An over-subtle reasoner; a sophist.
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- n. someone whose reasoning is subtle and often specious
If the ascetic moralist was a quasi - mathematician, the casuist was a kind of medical man.
"But tell me, Tribune, you who are a notable casuist, which is the best for a state -- that its governor should be over-thrifty or over-lavish?"
The casuist may therefore cherry pick his route to his destination.
Ugh. Singly it's not the worst of qualities a lawyerly type and casuist might bring to bear, but given the use it's put to it's positively insufferable.
Most valuably, Mr. Colucci shows Justice Kennedy's judicial philosophy to be a deeply rooted one and not, as one might suspect, the result of varied decisions that require a casuist or law professor to make coherent.
Tolstoy was often a rather wild thinker, a village explainer, an obtuse casuist; he filled his artistic works with his own woolly-minded theorizing.
“Prescribe the form of words we must lay hold of to achieve the object, and we will set to work, arch-casuist.”
That always was obvious enough but post-9/11 realities have made it stark, such that only the obdurately self-blinded and the gifted casuist can deny it.
To be sure, Miss Rawlins learnedly said, playing with her fan, a casuist would give it, that the matrimonial vow ought to supercede any other obligation.
Thou art, surely, casuist good enough to know, (what I have insisted upon* heretofore,) that the sin of seducing a credulous and easy girl, is as great as that of bringing to your lure an incredulous and watchful one.