Situtation ethics Flashcards
Situation ethics
A flexible and practical theory based on agape.
It is viewed by many churches as controversial and was rejected by the Catholic church and many protestant Churches.
Joseph Fletcher argued that love was what morality should serve. The situationist follows a moral law or violates or according to love’s need.
A teleological Christian ethic
Situation ethics identifies its roots in the New Testament references to Jesus setting aside the law or breaking established rules. For Fletcher, situation ethics was a Christian ethic though many Churches disagreed.
Fletcher and his three approaches to moral thinking
Fletcher divides moral thinking into three basic kinds: legalistic, antinomian and situational.
Legalistic ethics
Legalistic ethics has a set of predefined rules and regulations which direct how you should behave. Christianity shows legalistic features based on biblical commandments and/or the precepts expounded by Aquinas. Fletcher thought that this approach led to a legalistic mindset. Laws accumulate to cover all eventualities. Once murder has been prohibited, one has to clarify killing in self-defense, killing in war, killing unborn human beings and so on. The legalist must continually add to the law book to cover all eventualities, resulting in a web of laws. To be moral means following the appropriate moral law or applying the previously determined moral laws. For Fletcher, this mistake in both Catholic Christianity and Protestant Christianity. Fletcher rejected these legalistic approaches that were based on fixed laws.
Antinomian ethics
Antinomian ethics is the reverse of legalistic (law-based) ethics. A person using antinomianism doesn’t use any kind of rule, law or principle, or any kind of ethical system. Fletcher was critical of antinomianism: ‘it is literally unprincipled, ad hoc and casual. They follow no forecastable course from one situation to another. They are anarchic.
Situation ethics 2
How moral an action is depends on the situation. The situationist enters into the moral dilemma with the ethics, rules and principles of his/her community or tradition. The situationist is prepared to set aside those rules in the situation, if love seems better served by doing so. Moral decisions should depend on what best serves love.
Agape love
Whilst utilitarian’s see the greatest happiness as the greatest end, and Kantians look towards the summum bonum, others look to love, specifically agape, or unconditional love.
The six propositions
Fletcher suggests six propositions that should be kept in mind when seeking a decision.
The first proposition
Only one thing is intrinsically good; namely love: nothing else at all. Only love is good in and of itself. Love is the only universal.
The second proposition
The ruling norm of Christian decision is love: nothing else.
The third proposition
Love and justice are the same, for justice is love distributed, nothing else.
The fourth proposition
Love wills the neighbour’s good, whether we like him or not.
The fifth proposition
Only the end justifies the means; nothing else.
The sixth proposition
Move’s decisions are made situationally, not prescriptively
Strengths
It provides an alternative Christian ethic that is consistent with the Gospel representation of Jesus
The approach develops a principle from Jesus’ action of breaking the law when the situation demanded it for reasons of love.
It is flexible and practical
