3B Situation Ethics: the principles as a means of assessing morality

Question 1

Explain how agape is the “boss principle” of situation ethics.

Answer 1

• Agape = most imp. type of love
• As long as an action creates an agape outcome, it is the morally right thing to do
• “What a difference it makes when love, understood agapeically, is boss.”

Question 2

Which Old Testament teachings make it clear that agape is the most important principle of the Bible?

Answer 2

• Hebrew, “chesed”, describes G’s steadfast love for his ppl; the Hebrew ppl were often reminded to consider this love of G in terms of the action it produced when G intervened in Exodus
• Leviticus 19:18 - Hebrew, “aheb” = impulsive love towards G + fellow humans

Question 3

How did St. Augustine develop agape?

Answer 3

• Stated that it was the ultimate virtue
• Fletcher: “Augustine was right to make love the source principle […] upon which all other ‘virtues’ hang”
• Aquinas later developed this through NL: love = superlative virtue

Question 4

What did C.S Lewis say about agape?

Answer 4

• It is the highest level of love known to humanity

Question 5

Why did Fletcher develop the four working principles? What is their purpose?

Answer 5

∵ he understood that the boss principle can be vague

• If you follow them, you can be reasonably sure that your actions will produce the most loving consequences

Question 6

List the four working principles.

Answer 6

1) Pragmatism
2) Relativism
3) Positivism
4) Personalism

Question 7

Elaborate on the working principle of pragmatism.

Answer 7

• The solution to any ethical dilemma had to be practical (the idea = influenced by William James)
• F: “The key measure of the success of an ethical solution lay not in its thought but in its application”
- This does not mean that reason ≠ imp., but that pragmatic posture is at the head of the conference table.”

Question 8

Elaborate on the working principle of relativism.

Answer 8

• No action is right/wrong in itself
• “the situationist avoids words like ‘never’, ‘perfect’, ‘always’, ‘complete’, and […] absolutely”
• “agapeic love” = the measurement of relativity
• Although every sit. = unique, this does not mean that the response is antinomian and archaic; the sit. = always relative to agape, not its own circumstance

Question 9

Elaborate on the working principle of positivism.

Answer 9

• Give preference to faith: “The Christian […] understands love in terms of God”
• Statements of faith are accepted voluntarily and reason is used to work out one’s faith
• “Only the divine being […] is love substantive: […] God is love. Men […] only do love.”

Question 10

Elaborate on the working principle of personalism.

Answer 10

• People come first
• “Situation ethics puts people at the centre of concern”
• Ethics deals primarily w/ ppl rather than r. rules
• The disciples were given a command to love G’s ppl, not laws

Question 11

List the six fundamental principles.

Answer 11

1) Love is the only intrinsic good
2) Love is the ruling norm of Christianity
3 Love equals justice
4) Love for all
5) Loving ends justfiy the means
6) Love decides situationally

Question 12

Elaborate on the fundamental principle: love is the only intrinsic good.

Answer 12

• Actions can only be morally good if they promote the most loving outcome
• “intrinsically good regardless of the context”
• Agape = a verb - “Love is […] something we do”

Question 13

Elaborate on the fundamental principle: love is the ruling norm of Christianity.

Answer 13

• R. moral laws have been given false high status in C.tian ethics
• J. broke several r. rules: “the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath” - the rules serve the person instead of the rules becoming a dictator
• “Jesus ad Paul replaced the precepts of the Torah with the living principle of agape.”

Question 14

Elaborate on the fundamental principle: love equals justice.

Answer 14

• “Love and justice are the same, for justice is love distributed”
• Justice = true love at work in society
• Any injustice = a lack of love (e.g. a starving child or a person falsely arrested)
• If everyone worked towards creating loving outcomes there would be no injustices
• Justice = selfless love on a community scale

Question 15

Elaborate on the fundamental principle: love for all.

Answer 15

• Love wills the neighbour
- “love your neighbour”, “love your enemies”
• Act in a loving way to everyone
• Pure love = indiscriminate in its application
• Love = kenotic

Question 16

Elaborate on the fundamental principle: loving ends justify the means.

Answer 16

• F rejects the NL idea that the outcome should not justify the means, calling this an “absurd abstraction”
• Any system that proposoes that means are intrinsically good (and ∴ absolute) = fundamentally flawed as one can then justify war, corporal/capital punishments etc
• Loving outcomes can justify breaking trad. r. rules e.g. stealing bread to feed a starving family
• However, the act ≠ justified if the loving outcome was accidental

Question 17

Elaborate on the fundamental principle: love decides situationally.

Answer 17

• There should be no rules about what should/shouldn’t be done: we should only have the responsibility to create the most lving outcome in every situation
• Humans have sought for laws to become slaves to, which leads to failure ∵ they are ultimately unfollowable as the principles are too petty or too rigid to fit the facts of life
• “Imagine the plight of an obstetrician who believed he must always respirate every baby he delivered, no matter how monstrously deformed.”

Question 18

What are the four factors for judging a situation?

Answer 18

• End
• Means
• Motive
• Consequences