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PTE > 2.2 Situation Ethics > Flashcards

2.2 Situation Ethics Flashcards

1
Q

Situation Ethics

A
  • only one ultimate and invariable duty, and its formula is ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.’
  • consequentialist ethical theory
  • ‘love thy neighbour’ is a guiding principle
  • what’s the thing that I can do that is most loving?
  • Joseph Fletcher
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2
Q

Joseph Fletcher

A
  • an american professor in the field of bioethics (interested in medicine, development and technologies relating to biological organisms)
  • set up a foundation in America advocating for euthanasia (The Society For The Right To Die)
  • 1905-1991
  • wanted to create a Christian Ethic
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3
Q

how does Joseph Fletcher start his theory of situation ethics?

A

by quoting two people:
- ‘there is no one ethical system that can claim to be Christian’ - Bishop Robinson
- Jesus has no ethics apart from ‘love thy neighbour’ - Rudolf Bultmann

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4
Q

‘there is no one ethical…’

A

‘there is no one ethical system that can claim to be Christian’ - Bishop Robinson

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5
Q

Jesus has no ethics…’

A

Jesus has no ethics apart from ‘love thy neighbour’ - Rudolf Bultmann

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6
Q

anthropocentric

A

too focused on human beings

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7
Q

Fletcher’s view on natural law

A

Fletcher thought that natural law was a failure of Christian ethics, natural law draws that euthanasia should not be permitted. Fletcher thought it was un-Christian to force someone to live a life of torture, a life they don’t want to live.

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8
Q

Old Testament Ethics

A
  • Concerned primary with the 10 commandments or the ‘decalogue’
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9
Q

New Testament Ethics

A
  • Jesus goes around healing people on the Sabbath (Saturday in Judaism) - in response to criticism Jesus said ‘the Sabbath was made for the man, and not man for the Sabbath’
  • Also directly contradicted ‘an eye for an eye’ for turn the other cheek message (Matthew 5)
  • the New Testament is concerned primarily with:
    a. the ethics of Jesus eg. Matthew 5-7 (Sermon on the Mount, start with beatitudes which are a kind of virtue theory)
    b. the ethics of Paul
    Both set very high standards and are known as ‘kingdom ethics’
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10
Q

‘The Sabbath was made for…’

A

‘the Sabbath was made for the man, and not man for the Sabbath’ - Jesus, Mark 2:27

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11
Q

-

A

-

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12
Q

Roman Catholic Tradition

A
  • Follow Aquinas’ natural law ethics
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13
Q

Protestant Tradition

A
  • Use the Bible (and the Bible alone) as the source for moral law
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14
Q

-

A

-

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15
Q

Fletcher and agape love

A
  • believed there are no absolute laws other than the law of agape (selfless and unconditional) love
  • All the other laws were laid down in order to achieve the greatest amount of this love.
  • all the other laws are only guidelines to how to achieve this love, and thus they may be broken if the other course of action would result in more love
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16
Q

what are the two things Fletcher had a problem with?

A

legalistic ethics and antinomian ethics
- he feels situation ethics sits in the middle of these two

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17
Q

what are legalistic ethics?

A

A set of passed down laws that we follow, for example ‘Thou shalt not steal’
- Judaism has a law-based life passed on through the halakah oral tradition
- Christianity focuses on natural law or the decalogue

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18
Q

Fletcher’s problem with legalistic ethics

A

According to Fletcher, legalistic ethics runs into problems when life throws you a curve ball and requires an additional law to fix a situation. For example, ‘Thou shalt not kill’ has situations such as war, euthanasia, self-defence, abortion, etc that require additional laws.

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19
Q

what are antinomian ethics?

A
  • against the idea of law, there are no rules in life
  • A person who uses this system doesn’t have an ethical system at all.
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20
Q

Fletcher’s problem with antinomian ethics

A

Fletcher says ‘It is literally unprincipled purely ad hoc and causal’. ‘They follow no forecastable course from one situation to another.’

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21
Q

‘[antinomian ethics] is literally…’

A

‘[antinomian ethics] is literally unprincipled purely ad hoc and causal’ - Fletcher

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22
Q

‘[Antinomianism follows] no…’

A

‘They follow no forecastable course from one situation to another.’ - Fletcher

23
Q

Paul

A
  • had a revelatory experience
  • changed his name from Saul to Paul
  • wrote much of the new testament
  • thought the end of the world was imminent and told people to stay abstinent
24
Q

the four working principles of Situation Ethics

A
  • pragmatism
  • relativism
  • positivism
  • personalism
25
Q

‘the good it replies…’

A

‘The good, it replies, like the true, is whatever works.’ - Fletcher’s /Situation Ethics/
- the right thing should be practical

26
Q

‘[A pragmatist] turns away from… He turns toward…’

A

‘[A pragmatist] turns away from abstraction and insufficiency […] He turns toward concreteness and adequacy, towards facts, towards action and toward power’ - (In William James’ words) Fletcher’s /Situation Ethics/
- speak from experience - cannot reason to morals (Kant)
- eg. he would oppose rules that do not hold up inthe real world - eg. Catholic condemnation of contraception

27
Q

Pragmatism

A
  • one of Fletcher’s Four Working Principles
  • should speak from experience
  • cannot reason to morals (Kant)
  • eg. would oppose rules that do not hold up in the real world
    > Catholic condemnation of artificial contraception does not bring the most love
28
Q

‘We have become fully and irreversibly…’

A

‘We have become fully and irreversibly “contingent”, not only about our particular ideas but about the very idea of ideas themselves and about goodness itself’ - Fletcher’s /Situation Ethics/
- we have become too subject to change (which he condemns)

29
Q

‘The situationist avoids words like… as he avoids…’

A

‘The situationist avoids words like “never” and “perfect” and “always” and “complete” as he avoids the plague, as he avoids “absolutely”.’ - Fletcher’s /Situation Ethics/
- a relativist looks at every situation independently

30
Q

‘To be “absolutely relative”…’

A

‘To be “absolutely relative” (an uneasy combination of terms” is to be inchoate, random, unpredictable, unjudgable, meaningless, amoral - rather in the antinomian mode.’ - Fletcher’s /Situation Ethics/
> condemns this

31
Q

‘In Christian situationism, the…’

A

‘In Christian situationism, the ultimate criterion is, as we shall be seeing, “agapaeic love”.’ - Fletcher’s /Situation Ethics/
- apply agape love to every situation, each result should/will be different

32
Q

Relativism

A
  • one of Fletcher’s Four Working Principles
  • we have become too subject to change, antinomianism, condemns this
  • a situationist/relativist treats every situation independently and applies agape love
33
Q

‘two ways to approach “religious knowledge”’ according to Fletcher

A

‘One is theological naturalism’ - Fletcher’s /Situation Ethics/
> understanding God through reason (Aquinas)
‘The other approach is theological positivism’ - “ “
> choose to accept God and then build on this

34
Q

‘It’s starting point is like…’

A

‘Its starting point is like Anselm’s Credu ut intelligam in the Proslogion.’ - Fletcher’s /Situation Ethics/
> “I believe so that I understand” - choose to believe, then use the belief as a basis for understanding
> build rationally upon faith
> Anselm: ‘fides quaerens intellectum’ - “faith seeking understanding”

35
Q

‘Creu ut intelligam’

A
  • Anselm’s in the Proslogion
  • positivism, Fletcher
  • ‘I believe so that I understand’
36
Q

Positivism

A
  • one of Fletcher’s Four Working Principles
  • choose to accept God’s existence and love and then use this as a basis for understanding
37
Q

‘Situation ethics puts…

A

‘Situation ethics puts people at the centre of concern, not things. Obligation is to persons, not to things’ - Fletcher’s /Situation Ethics/

38
Q

‘Anything, material or…’

A

‘Anything, material or immaterial, is “good” only because it is good for or to somebody.’ - Fletcher’s /Situation Ethics/

39
Q

Personalism

A
  • one of Fletcher’s Four Working Principles
  • put people at the centre of your ethic eg. sabbath made for man not man for sabbath
40
Q

Agape Love

A
  • an attitude and not a feeling at all, one which does not expect anything in return adn does not give any special considerations to anyone
  • regards the enemy in the same way as a friend, brother, spouse, lover
  • In the Christian context, the type of love which is manifest in how God relates to us. Consider Christ’s love in saying that he forgave those carrying out his execution.
  • Jesus showed love for the “forgotten ones”
  • showing love to other people (‘thy neighbour’) shows your love for God
  • ‘God’s own agape was revealed when he sent his one and only son into the world so that we might live through Him’ - John
41
Q

‘God’s own agape was…’

A

‘God’s own agape was revealed when he sent his one and only son into the world so that we might live through Him’ - John

42
Q

the first proposition

A

Only one ‘thing’ is intrinsically good; namely, love, nothing else at all
- an action is right or wrong in as far as it brings about the most amount of love
- echoing Bentham’s Hedonic Calculus, Fletcher defends what he calls the agapeic calculus, the greatest amount of neighbour welfare for the largest number of neighbours possible
- however it is hard to quantify love so it doesn’t function like pleasure

43
Q

agapeic calculus

A
  • echoing Bentham’s hedonic calculus
  • the greatest amount of neighbour welfare for the largest number of neighbours possible
44
Q

the second proposition

A

The ruling norm of Christian decision is love, nothing else
- agape love - an attitude, does not expect in return
- example of Mrs Johnson who forgave her son’s killer

45
Q

the second proposition example - Mrs Johnson

A

In February 1993, Mrs Johnson’s son, Laramiun Byrd, 20, was shot in the head by 16-year-old Oshea Israel after an argument at a party. Mrs Johnson subsequently forgave her son’s killer and, after he had served a 17 year sentence for the crime, asked him to move in next door to her.
She wasn’t condoning his actions or, nor will she forget what he did, but she does love her son’s killer. That love is agápē.

46
Q

the third proposition

A

Love and Justice are the same, for justice is love distributed, nothing else
- For Fletcher, practically all moral problems can be boiled down to an apparent tension between love and justice
- To act justly or fairly is precisely to act in love. “Love is justice, justice is love.” - Fletcher
- Trevell Coleman handing himself in

47
Q

the third proposition - Trevell Coleman example

A
  • Trevell Coleman, better known as the rapper G Dep, was a rising star on the NY hip-hop scene. He had a wife and twin boys.
  • He was raised Catholic and always retained his faith but he had a terrible secret; as an 18 year old, he had mugged and shot a man.
  • He never knew what happened to his victim, yet 17 years later, in 2010, he went to the police and confessed.
  • A police search of their cold case files found the case of John Henkel who was shot and killed in 1993, matching the two cases.
  • Coleman is now serving a jail sentence of 15 years to life for Henkel’s murder. He has no regrets; “I wanted to get right with God”.
    » balance between love for his family and doing the right thing (justice)
48
Q

the fourth proposition

A

Love wills the neighbour good when we like him or not
- agápē is the business of loving the unloveable
- /Christian love does not ask us to lose or abandon our sense of good and evil, or even or superior and inferior; it simply insists that however we rate them, and whether we like them or not, they are our neighbors and are to be loved./ - Fletcher

49
Q

‘Christian love does not ask us…’

A

‘Christian love does not ask us to lose or abandon our sense of good and evil, or even or superior and inferior; it simply insists that however we rate them, and whether we like them or not, they are our neighbours and are to be loved.’ - Fletcher

50
Q

the fifth proposition

A

Only the ends justifying the means, nothing else
- In direct rejection of the deontological approaches Fletcher says that any action we take, as considered as an action independent of its consequences is literally, “meaningless and pointless”.
- An action only acquires its status as a means by virtue of an end beyond itself.
- (Must consider the ends, the ends give meaning to an action)

51
Q

the sixth proposition

A

Love’s decisions are made situationally, not prescriptively
- Ethical decisions mostly exist in a grey area, no decision can be taken before considering the situation
- Fletcher gives the Arizona woman abortion example

52
Q

the sixth proposition - Arizona woman abortion example

A

Fletcher gives the example of a woman in Arizona who learned that she might “bear a defective baby because she had taken thalidomide”. What should she do? The loving decision was not one given by the law which stated that all abortions are wrong. However, she travelled to Sweden where she had an abortion.
» Even if the embryo had not been defective, according to Fletcher he actions were “brave and responsible and right” because she was acting in light of the particulars of the situation to bring about the most love

53
Q

evaluating situation ethics

A
  • love could be considered too subjective a concept (could two situationists disagree on what the most loving thing to do is in x situation)
  • is love just the same as happiness? - utilitarian
  • the boundaries of this situation are unclear (may affect people who aren’t immediately considered eg. euthanasia, value of life)
  • is Fletcher right that this is a Christian ethic? - many Christians actually oppose Fletcher’s ethics as being reductionist in reducing the Bible down, Jesus says a lot of other things too
  • John 14:23 Jesus says ‘If anyone loves me, he will keep my word’
  • too permissive
54
Q

Jesus says ‘If anyone loves…’

A

Jesus says ‘If anyone loves me, he will keep my word’ - John 14:23

PTE (13 decks)

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