Situation Ethics

Question 1

Intellectual Background of Situation Ethics

Answer 1

Religious believers believed hat God reveals moral laws to them and that these are always to be applied. It is impossible to be good without following them.
-Kant’s deontological approach: Moral rules are good in themselves and should be obeyed regardless of consequences. They comprise a moral duty that is binding to all.

Question 2

Social Background of Situation Ethics

Answer 2

• sexual revolution, freedom and contraception
• freedom for women after they worked in the war
• Counter/Youth culture
• Civil rights movement
• distrust of government with Vietnam war

Question 3

The Church’s reaction to changes in moral perspectives

Answer 3

BCC 1964: appointed a working party to “Prepare a statement for the Christian case for abstinence from sexual intercourse before marriage and faithfulness within marriage… and to suggest means whereby the Christian position may be effectively presented to the various sections of a community”

Made use of the Schofield report (The Sexual Behaviour of Young People 1965)

Reflected opinion that there had been a general lowering of moral standards.

Aimed to promote “a sane and responsible attitude towards love and marriage”

Question 4

Michael Schofield’s ‘The Sexual Behaviour of Young People’

Answer 4

Identified the new influences on young people:
“greater independence; more money in their pockets and purses; the weakening of family bonds and religious influences; the development of earlier maturity, physically, emotionally and mentally; the impact of modern books, television [and] periodicals”

Question 5

J.A.T. Robinsons ‘Honest to God’

Answer 5

1963

God is not a literal being “up there” above the universe
-agrees with Tillich that God is the “ground of our being” who, although significant, is not a supernatural being who intervenes with the universe

-Fletcher: had written that Christian ethics was “not a scheme of codified conduct. It is a purposive effort to relate love to a world of relativities through a casuistry obedient to love”

Question 6

Bishop of Woolwich and BCC working party’s observations on Christian morality

Answer 6

Bishop of Woolwich: “the gulf must grow wider before it is bridged”

Working Party of the BCC (British Council of Churches): “there is a real uncertainty about what is the proper basis for Christian moral judgement”

Question 7

Fletcher, Robinson and the New Testament

Answer 7

Fletcher and Robinson used New Testament dialogues between Jesus and the Pharisees.
• Pharisees applied legalistic Jewish morals to ethical situations while Jesus went to first principles.
• The story of the adulterous woman shows Jesus applying principles of love, compassion etc, demonstrating the weakness of using absolute laws for individual cases.

Fletcher: “Bultmann was correct in saying that Jesus had no ethics if we accept…ethics was a system of values and rules”

Question 8

Morality as Situationally variable

Answer 8

Robinson: People had to respond situationally not prescriptively to show true value, no “packaged” moral judgements

Joseph Fletcher: “The morality of an action depends on the situation”

Question 9

Reactions to Situation Ethics

Answer 9

Situationist or existential ethics were not instantly popular
• 1956, Pope Pius XII banned the view from seminaries
• Protestant reaction was also suspicious as situation ethics declares nothing can be labelled wrong

Question 10

Joseph Fletcher general information

Answer 10

• 1905-1991
• American professor who founded the theory of situation ethics in the 1960s
• was a pioneer in bioethics and was involved in the areas of abortion, infanticide, euthanasia and cloning
• he was a priest who later renounced his belief in God and became an atheist

Question 11

Fletcher identified three ways of making moral decisions

Answer 11

-legalistic
-antinomian: no standard
-situation ethics

Question 12

Legalistic Ethics (and Fletcher’s opinion)

Answer 12

• has a set of moral rules and regulations
• Judaism and Christianity both have legalistic ethical traditions
• Fletcher said this runs into problems- life’s complexities require additional laws. Murder, killing in self defence, killing in war, killing unborn human beings etc
• becomes complex and like a textbook morality that leaves people simply to check the manual to decide what is right and wrong

Question 13

Antinomian Ethics (and Fletcher’s opinion)

Answer 13

• the reverse of legalistic ethics
• it literally means ‘against law’
• a person using antinomianism doesn’t really use an ethical system at all
• he or she enters decision-making as if each occasion was totally unique
• making a moral decision is a matter of spontaneity, being adhoc, casual and unprincipled
• Fletcher is also critical of this approach as it is unprincipled

Question 14

Situation Ethics

Answer 14

• One single rule - the rule of agape. This love is not merely an emotion but involves wanting what is best for the other person, unconditionally
• The situationist enters into the moral dilemma with the principles and rules of their community
• However, they are prepared to set these rules aside in the situation if love seems better served by doing so
• “The situationist follows a moral law or violates it according to love’s need”
• all moral decisions are hypothetical, lying could be a good thing if it serves love, giving to charity is only good if it is the loving thing to do
• no universal moral rules or rights- each case is unique and deserves a unique solution

Question 15

Application of Situation Ethics to divorce

Answer 15

• Robinson: no supernatural bond occurs, it is an outdated idea. Love may be best served by leaving behind supernaturalist laws
• Fletcher and Robinson emphasised agapé love as the only intrinsically good thing. Barclay defines it as “unconquerable good will..the determination to seek the other man’s highest good”
• employing agapé may situationally require ignoring laws
• Fletcher: if “emotional and spiritual welfare…can be served best by a divorce…then love requires it”

Question 16

Fletcher’s principles (general)

Answer 16

Situation ethic is sensitive to variety and complexity. It uses principles to illuminate the situation, but not to direct the action.
-Fletcher divides his principles into two categories:
• The four working principles
• The six fundamental principles

Question 17

The Four Working Principles

Answer 17

Pragmatism
-an action must effectively work towards the end, which is love

Relativism
-absolutely no absolutes, situation ethics “relativises the absolute, it does not absolutise the relative”

Positivism
-freely choosing to accept that God is love, and so to act reasonably in light of this is to behave in ways that maximise love

Personalism
-situationists put people first, “value is what happens to something when it happens to be useful to love working for the sake of persons”

Question 18

The Six Fundamental Principles (1-3)

Answer 18

First proposition
-“Only one thing is intrinsically good; namely love”
-love is good regardless of circumstances and by its nature

Second proposition
-“The ruling norm of Christian decision is love”
-Jesus’ teaching of love overrides other laws

Third proposition
-“justice is love distributed”
-justice is love put into practice

Question 19

The Six Fundamental Principles (4-6)

Answer 19

Fourth proposition
-“[L]ove wills the neighbour’s good”
-love is purposed with benefitting others

Fifth proposition
-“Only the end justifies the means”
-the end must be a loving one for the means to be good

Sixth proposition
-“[L]ove’s devisions are made situationally, not prescriptively”
-what’s loving varies between situations and no single set of rules always apply

Question 20

John Dewey and James H. Tufts, ‘Ethics’ 1922

Answer 20

“reflective morality demands observation of particular situations, rather than fixed adherence to a priori principle”
-a person who practices situation ethics approaches ethical problems with some general moral principles rather than a rigorous set of ethical laws and will give up those principles if doing so brings greater good

Question 21

Joseph Fletcher, ‘Naturalism, Situation Ethics and Value Theory’ in ‘Ethics at the Crossroads’ 1995

Answer 21

“since ‘circumstances alter cases’, situationism holds that in practice what in some times and places we call right is in other times and places wrong…for example, lying is ordinarily not in the best interest of interpersonal communication and social integrity, but is justifiable nevertheless in certain situations”
-Situation ethics was originally devised in a Christian context but can be applied elsewhere too

Question 22

Situation Ethics’ derivation from Christianity

Answer 22

Fletcher roots his ideas in the roots of Christianity- the gospel accounts of Jesus and his message of love

Mark 2:23-28 -Forbidden to work on the Sabbath, picking grain was considered work. This broke the law.
-Jesus gives a two-fold response:
* David broke a similar rule
* the sabbath is for man
-the commandments are not to be followed slavishly, but exist for man’s benefit

Matt 22:36-39 -Fletcher uses this, love is the centre of situation ethics
-the only rule that you should act upon is this,
-no two situations are exactly alike, but love can always be used to guide decisions

John 8:1 -We are all sinners, so to condemn another is hypocrisy and unloving
-the only rule is that you should act in the way that results with the most love

Question 23

Gordon Dunstan on Situation Ethics

Answer 23

“It is possible…to forgive Professor Fletcher for writing this book, for he is a generous and loveable man. It is harder to forgive SCM for publishing it”

Question 24

Glyn Simon on Situation Ethics

Answer 24

“A false spirituality of this kind has always haunted the thinking of clever men”

Question 25

Pope Pius XII on Situation Ethics

Answer 25

-banned SE from being discussed at RC seminaries
-“an individualistic and subjective appeal to the concrete circumstances of actions to justify decisions in opposition to the natural law or God’s revealed will”

Question 26

Romans 13:9-10

Answer 26

(St Paul) “The commandments… are summed up in this one rule: “Love your neighbour as yourself.”Love does no harm to its neighbour. Therefore love is te fulfilment of the law.”
• people need to follow God’s laws in order to follow Jesus’ teaching on how agape is distributed

Question 27

Tillich on Situation Ethics

Answer 27

“the law of love is the ultimate law because it is the negation of law”

Question 28

Bultman on Situation Ethics

Answer 28

“love thy neighbour as thyself, is the ultimate duty”

Question 29

(Fletcher’s unique situations) Unique Situations and General examples

Answer 29

Fletcher’s used unique cases, in which legalistic morals are difficult to apply, to argue the need for situation ethics:

-General examples:
• a women who kills crying baby to avoid party being ambushed on wilderness trail
• military nurse treating patients harshly to determine them to get fit and be able toleave
• Mrs Bergmeier who chose to be impregnated by a Russian prison guard to be released (called sacrificial adultery by Fletcher)

Question 30

(Fletcher’s unique situations) Fletcher’s first hand examples

Answer 30

• Met a man with stomach cancer who would die in 6 months without expensive treatment. His death would leave large inheritance for family, but for him to take the treatment, on which he could survive for 3 years, would leave his family in debt after his eventual death.
• Patient in mental hospital was raped. Their father requested an abortion for them but was refused because it was against the law under those circumstances.

Question 31

(Fletcher’s unique situations) Fletcher’s examples from literature and history

Answer 31

• T.E. Lawrence killed an Arab to prevent a longer vengeful conflict.
• The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki brought an end to the second world war, although many civilians died.

Question 32

Agape Love

Answer 32

• the love of selflessness
• is not just emotional love, but rational love

Question 33

William Barclay’s summary of SE

Answer 33

-Fletcher wrote nothing universally or intrinsically right or wrong, goodness and badness vary circumstantially
• this is written with knowledge of the rules, accepts these exist but doesn’t want to be bound by them
• Bonhoeffer: “Principles are only tools in the hand of God, soon to be thrown away as unserviceable”
-only love is intrinsically good
• Agape love, the determination to seek the highest good of others
• an attitude rather than an emotion

Question 34

WB on Fletcher’s examples

Answer 34

-Daniel Boone’s wilderness trail: crying baby drew ambushers to party’s position, resulting in massacre, in another case where the baby was killed they survived
• in this case, following laws may not lead to the best, or most loving, outcome
-cabdriver and his family had always voted Republican, but in one election he said: “there are times when a man has to push his principles aside, and do the right thing!”

Question 35

WB on love and justice

Answer 35

-Fletcher: justice is love distributed
-Niebuhr: love is transcendent and impossible, justice is doable
-Brunner: love is between two persons, justice is between groups
-Sammy Davis Jr.: “the Christian religion preaches, Love thy neighbour, and the Jewish religion preaches justice…justice is the big thing we need”
-Fletcher: some will claim to love black people but deny them justice

Question 36

WB’s criticisms of SE 1

Answer 36

-“the greater number of Fletcher’s illustrations are drawn from the abnormal, the unusual and the extraordinary”
• extraordinary situations need like solutions, this doesn’t remove the helpfulness of laws in the everyday
-“situation ethics presents us with a terrifying degree of freedom”
• “Fletcher is quite right when he says that basically men do not want freedom…they would rather apply laws and principles to the situation”
• “the lesson of experience is that we need a certain amount of law”
-(against J.A.T. Robinson): “Man has not yet come of age…still needs the crutch and protection of law”

Question 37

WB’s criticisms of SE 2

Answer 37

-“there are things which can in no circumstances be right…to break up a family relationship in the name of so-called love can never be right”
-Fletcher cites The Rainmaker: someone is seduced to prevent them from being ‘spinstered’, although there are unmarried women who are not frustrated spinsters
• there are cures for abnormal conditions which don’t break moral law
-“the situationist is liable to forget quite simply the grace of God. [Christianity] must make good its claim to make bad men good”
-Fletcher: “Nothing we do is truly moral unless we are free to do otherwise”, tension between freedom and law
• however, (Barclay): “Most of us have made ourselves such that we are not free”

Question 38

WB on importance of law

Answer 38

-“once a thing is not forbidden, it may be felt not only to be permitted but to be encouraged…there is a place for law as the encourager of morality”

Question 39

WB on tensions between the individual and the community

Answer 39

-“in our time it is the individual who is stressed”
-too much law limits individuals, to much individualism weakens law, “it can never be right to develop [one]self at the expense of others”

Question 40

Jesus (potentially) against situation Ethics

Answer 40

Matthew 5:17-18 : “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfil them”

Matthew 16:18 : “you are Peter, and it is on this rock that I will build my congregation” (apostolic succession)