Situation Ethics 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 is practical, rather than purely ideologically.
Relativism
The rejection of 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 Gods 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
Antinomians ethics do not recognise the role of law in morality
Situational ethics
Another term for situation 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 and of itself.
Fletcher argued only love was intrinsically good.
