Situation Ethics

Question 1

What are the 4 working principles of situation ethics?

Answer 1

4 Working princaples of situation tehics
Pragmatism – Practical approach to tehics. You can actualy use it to help you make moral descisions and it has to work in daily life, has to be practical

Positivity – Positive approach to ethics. Positive because it’s based on doing something instead of what you cannot do - it must put faith before reasoning – “I am a Christian, so what should I do?”

Personalism – Personal approach tto ethics. People should be at the centre of the theory

Relativism – It’s relative to every situation so there cannot be fixed laws

Question 2

What are the 6 fundamental principles?

Answer 2

1. Love is the only absolute (it is intrinsically good)
2. Christian decision making is based on love
3. Justice is love distributed
4. Love wants the good for anyone, whoever they are
5. Only the end justifies the means
6. Love is acted out situationally not prescriptivally

Question 3

What is SE based on?

Answer 3

It is based on agape love (Christian unconditional love), and says that we should always do the most loving thing in any situation.

Question 4

Which Scholar is known for SE?

Answer 4

Joseph Fletcher

Question 5

Advantages of SE?

Answer 5

The key advantage is that it uses rules to provide a framework but allows people to break rules to reflect life’s complexities.

Question 6

Disadvantages of SE?

Answer 6

It does not provide a clear definition of what love actually is.

Some might say it is too subjective – because decisions have to be made from within the situation. Humans do not have a bird’s eye view on a situation so have difficulty in seeing what the consequences will be.

Agape love is too much to aspire to and may be polluted by a selfish human tendency.

It is human nature to love family more than strangers.

We do not know whose rules to follow.

Question 7

What is Legalism and Antiamoniamism?