Key Terms Flashcards
Justice?
Justice ordinarily refers to notions of fair distribution of benefits for all. Fletcher specifically sees justice as a kind of tough love; love applied to the world.
Pragmatism?
Acting, in moral situations, in a way that’s practical rather than purely ideologically.
Relativism?
The rejection of absolute moral standards, such as laws or rights. Good and bad are relative to an individual or a community or, in Fletcher’s case, to love.
Positivism?
Proposes something as true or good without demonstrating it. Fletcher posits love as good.
Personalism?
Ethics centred on people, rather than laws or objects.
Conscience?
The term “conscience” may variously be used to refer to a faculty within us, a process of moral reasoning, insights from God or it may be understood in psychological terms. Fletcher described it as function rather than a faculty.
Teleological Ethics?
Moral goodness is determined by the end or result.
Legalistic Ethics?
Law-based moral decision-making.
Antinomian Ethics?
Antinomian ethics don’t recognise the role of law in morality (‘nomos’ is Greek for ‘law’).
Situational Ethics?
Ethics focused on the situation, rather than fixed rules.
Agape Love?
Unconditional love, the only ethical norm in situationism.
Extrinsically Good?
Good defined with reference to the end rather than good in an end of itself. Fletcher argued only love was intrinsically good.
