Situation Ethics Flashcards
What is agape
Unconditional love
What are the four working principles of situation ethics
Pragmatism - Situation ethics is good because it works
Relativism - Every situation we should act out of love (absolute) but love requires to be relative to the situation
Positivism - No answer to ‘why should I act out of love?’, we require a leap of faith is required
Personalism - Ignoring the set absolute laws of ‘what would the law say’, and instead focusing on ‘who can be helped?’
What are the six propositions of situation ethics
Love is always good - only thing that’s good
Love is the only norm - love is above all laws
Love and Justice are the same, love is just justice but distributed - What’s the most loving thing / What’s the must just thing
Love is not liking - Agape, Philia, Romantic
Love justifies the means - End is much more important than the means
Love decides there and then - We are to decide what the most loving thing to do is
Who created situation ethics
Joseph Fletcher
Is situation ethics teleological or deontological
Teleological - caring about the end/final
Advantages of situation ethics
Clear and easy to understand as it is one principle
Flexible
Based on love which is usually a key feature of many moral systems
Disadvantages of situation ethics
Does not provide an objective basis between two views which both act out on love
Emotions can change easily, which isn’t a good way to follow laws
Child torture can be seen as the way to go in comparison to something else
Completely opinion
Reasons as to why situation ethics is a religious theory
‘Love your neighbour’
Jesus is seen as opposing the law and acting out of love
Reasons why situation ethics isn’t a religious theory
Jesus tells his disciples that if they love him they are to obey his commandments, implying that there are commandments other than love
What does Fletcher believe conscience is
Conscience is an active process, a verb, not a noun, it constantly decides.
