Narrative and casuistry: a response to John Arras.

I find myself in the awkward position of commenting on a paper with which I am largely sympathetic, especially when Professor Arras calls attention to the importance of thick descriptions and interpretation in casuistry.' Still, I am reluctant to embrace the language of narrative ethics to enrich casuistry, which has led me to raise three questions. First: Is narrative the proper genre for developing casuistry, even as casuistry is enriched and developed by Arras? I raise this question to suggest that there is no easy marriage between casuistry and narrative ethics, at least as these terms are understood in the guild of philosophical and religious ethicists today. To clarify this point, consider the contributions of Kenneth Kirk2 and Alasdair MacIntyre3 to casuistry and narrative ethics, respectively. Kirk provides, to my mind, the best account of casuistry's origins and aims. According to Kirk, casuistry is occasioned, in large measure, by two experiences: doubt and perplexity.4 In the first experience, doubt, there is uncertainty about the meaning or applicability of a moral principle. One is met with ambiguity, for example, when a principle's range of application is unclear. In this instance, casuists seek to clarify the practical applicability of a vague piece of legislation. One reason that casuists go to work is to liberate the consciencefrom interpretive or moral uncertainty. To this end, casuists typically attempt to specify the meaning of general rules, to develop paradigms and taxonomies to classify actions, to reason analogically from familiar paradigms to new cases, and to attend in various ways to the circumstances that surround the action in question. All of these endeavors pursue clarity and precision, providing a form of moral therapy for the anxious conscience, plagued as it is by ambiguity. A second, quite different occasion results from the experience of moral conflict. When this happens, the conscience is not met with a dubious law in need of specification; rather, the conscience is bound by two clear and specific rules, one which requires sacrificing the other.5 The conscience is not doubtful about whether a law applies; instead, it is perplexed about which law ought to prevail when at least two are relevant. I suspect that most people know all too well the kind of anxieties wrought by the conflict of duties. For example, the duty to uphold a promise to meet a friend may have to be