Student Zone
Situation Ethics
CONTENT
Fletcher’s situation ethics, including:
agape
the six propositions
the four working principles
conscience
Key Knowledge
origins of agape in the New Testament and its religious development in the writing of Fletcher
what they are and how they give rise to the theory of situation ethics and its approach to moral decision-making:
1. Love is the only thing that is intrinsically good
2. Love is the ruling norm in ethical decision making and replaces all laws
3. Love and justice are the same thing–justice is love that is distributed
4. Love wills the neighbour’s good regardless of whether the neighbour is liked or not
5. Love is the goal or end of the act and that justifies any means to achieve that goal
6. Love decides on each situation as it arises without a set of laws to guide it
what they are and how they are intended to be applied:
1. pragmatism: it is based on experience rather than on theory
2. relativism: it is based on making the absolute laws of Christian ethics relative
3. positivism: it begins with belief in the reality and importance of love
4. personalism: persons, not laws or anything else, are at the centre of situation ethics
what conscience is and what it is not according to Fletcher, i.e. a verb not a noun; a term that describes attempts to make decisions creatively
Analysis
discuss issues raised by Fletcher’s theory of situation ethics, including:
whether or not situation ethics provides a helpful method of moral decision-making
whether or not an ethical judgement about something being good, bad, right or wrong can be based on the extent to which, in any given situation, agape is best served
whether Fletcher’s understanding of agape is really religious or whether it means nothing more than wanting the best for the person involved in a given situation
whether or not the rejection of absolute rules by situation ethics makes moral decision-making entirely individualistic and subjective
Articles and Podcasts
Dialogue: Situation Ethics: Decent or Indecent Proposal?, Edition 17
Dialogue: Who’s afraid of Relativism?, Edition 28
Dialogue: Who’s to judge? Ethical Relativism versus Objectivism, Edition 23
Dialogue: The Puzzle of Relativism, Edition 38
Dialogue: Situation Ethics, Edition 47