Situation Ethics

Question 1

Legalism VS antinomianism

Answer 1

Legalism is the view that people require fixed rules to follow. Antinomianism is the view that there are no rules or laws to follow at all.Fletcher said SE was between the two.

Question 2

Agape

Answer 2

Selfless, truly sacrificial love like that of Jesus.

Question 3

The four working principles

Answer 3

Pragmatism. An action must be calibrated to the reality of the situation.
Relativism. Actions can be situationally relative to each circumstance.
Positivism. That situations shouldn’t be led by ration alone, love and emotion is needed. ( Unlike Kantian ethics)
Personalism. Situation depends in the people involved, people centred

Question 4

SE as teleological

Answer 4

It relies on no moral duties but guiding principles, and what consequences will produce the most agapeistic results . Fletcher argues Jesus was also consequential in his actions, such as when he broke the sabbath he said “ Man was not made for the Sabbath, the Sabbath was made for man.”

Question 5

Strengths of SE

Answer 5

Strength: Situation ethics fits with the approach to ethics taken by Jesus, who did seem to overturn rules (like that of Moses’ eye for an eye), allow us to break rules like the sabbath and said that the greatest rule was to love your neighbours as yourself.

Strength: Situation ethics demands that we do the loving thing in each situation, which seems like a good ethical principle. It’s hard to see how acting based on love could ever be morally wrong.

Strength: As a teleological theory, situation ethics is perpetually relevant and flexible, allowing for the situation to be taken into account. It allows Christian ethics to adapt to the new ethical situations and issues created by modern society and technology. Doing what has a loving outcome will always be relevant to a moral situation, unlike other Christian approaches which try to tie goodness to particular acts regardless of the situation.

Question 6

Weaknesses of SE

Answer 6

NATURALISTIC FALLACY-Can always be

Weakness: Fletcher faces criticism from traditional Christian ethics that his theory cannot be considered properly Christian, since it seems to only follow the command to love, ignoring most of the teachings in the Bible. For example, Protestants, following Luther, believe that in ethical judgement we should only follow the Bible’s teachings, a view they called ‘sola scriptura’ meaning the ‘Bible alone’ is the source of moral authority, not the autonomous individual deciding the demands of agape in their situation. Fletcher has diluted Christian ethics into just loving others or wanting the best for others, which is not distinctive from secular morality or just general well-wishing.

Weakness: The subjectivity of agape is a criticism of situation ethics which claims that people have very different opinions about what counts as loving which suggests that it is subjective, meaning mind-dependent. For example, an over-protective parent might think they are being loving. Even a Nazi might think they are being loving when acting on their beliefs, because they genuinely think the world will be a better place if they do so. If it’s possible for anyone to believe that anything is loving, surely it’s too unstable a basis for ethics. This also suggests that it’s not a religious theory as if situation ethics is subjective it cannot depend on an objective ethics from God.