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Situation Ethics
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Situation EthicsLegalism, situation ethics & antinomianism
Legalism is the view that people require fixed rules to follow. Antinomianism is the view that there are no
rules or laws to follow at all. Fletcher claimed that his situation ethics was a middle ground which avoids
the problems of each extreme while retaining the benefit of each. The downside of legalism is that it
cannot take the situation into account, the downside of antinomianism is that it leads to moral chaos. The
upside of legalism is that it has clear guidance for people to follow, the upside of antinomianism is that it
takes the situation into account. Situation ethics takes the situation into account, give people clear
guidance and avoids moral chaos. It does this by claiming that love is the one single absolute principle
which should be applied to all situations. The action that is good is the one which has the most loving
consequence in the situation you are in.
Agape
The importance of Agape in Christianity is drawn from Jesus saying that the ‘greatest commandment’ is to
‘love your neighbour as yourself’. Fletcher interprets that as suggesting all other religious rules, principles
and commandments only have value insofar as they enable Agape. For example, the 10 commandments
clearly state that murder is wrong. However, Fletcher gives the example of a family hiding from bandits
when their baby started crying, which would reveal their hiding place. Fletcher said it’s the most loving
thing to kill the baby because the situation was that they would otherwise all die anyway, including the
baby.
The four working principles
Fletcher’s four working principles are the result of having an ethics based on agape. They are principles
that are important to bare in mind when understanding and applying situation ethics.
Pragmatism. An action must be calibrated to the reality of the situation.
Relativism. Fletcher claimed his theory “relativizes the absolute, it does not absolutize the relative”.
Relativizing the absolute means that absolutes like “Do not kill” become relative to love. If it has a loving
outcome to kill, such as euthanasia sometimes can, then that absolute is false relative to love. Not
absolutizing the relative means that it is not total relativism where any moral claim could be justified. It is
always relative to love which means that only moral claims which are valid when relative to love will be
justified for Fletcher.
Positivism. Natural law and Kantian ethics are based on reason but Fletcher thought ethics had to begin
with faith in love because Fletcher thought no rational answer can be given for why someone should love
as it is a matter of faith in Jesus’ command to love your neighbour as yourself.
Personalism. Situation ethics puts people above rules. As Jesus said “The Sabbath was made for man,
not man for the Sabbath”. Fletcher claims this shows that Jesus knew rules could be broken if it was for
the good of humanity to do so.
The six fundamental principles
Situation Ethics 1
, The six fundamental principle are foundational principles followers of situation ethics must follow that
elaborate on what it means and requires for an action to maximise agape.
Only love is intrinsically good. Everything else has conditional value depending on whether it helps or
hurts people, but love is always unconditionally and therefore intrinsically good.
The ruling norm of Christian decision is love; nothing else.
Love and justice are the same, for justice is love distributed, nothing else. Fletcher think that
maximising agape is the only ethical goal. Many think that justiice is an ethical goal, so Fletcher here is
explaining that justice actually reduces to love, it is merely the question of how widely and fairly love is
distributed.
Love wills the neighbour’s good whether we like him or not. Jesus called on us to love our neighbour
no matter who they are, which includes people we don’t like.
Only the end justifies the means; nothing else. The is Fletcher’s consequentialism. If the consequence
of an action is the most loving possible then it is good, it doesn’t matter what the action is. The end of
maximising agape justifies the means we use to produce it.
Love decides there and then. When we are faced with a moral choice we have to decide there and then
in that situation what the right thing to do is.
Fletcher’s views on conscience
Fletcher thought that the conscience was what enabled you to figure out the requirements of agape in
your situation. He said conscience was a verb not a noun, indicating he disagreed with the traditional view
that conscience is an internal moral compass or mental ability to intuitively know what is right or wrong.
Whether situation ethics grants people too much
freedom
Strength: Fletcher and Robinson argue (influenced by Bonhoeffer) that humanity has ‘come of age’,
however. This means that humanity has become more mature. In medieval and ancient time, when
humanity had not come of age, people in general were less educated and less self-controlling. This meant
that they needed fixed ridged clear rules to follow, because they could not be trusted to understand and
act on the nuances and complexities in how a rule could justifiably be bent or broken if the situation called
for it. However, now people are more civilised, to the point that granting them more autonomy will
increase love without risking the stability of society.
Weakness & counter: William Barclay disagreed. He argues that situation ethics gives moral agents a
dangerous amount of freedom. For freedom to be good, love has to be perfect. If there is no or not
enough love then ‘freedom can become selfishness and even cruelty’. If everyone was a saint, then
situation ethics would be perfect. Barclay argues mankind has not yet come of age and so ‘still needs the
crutch and protection of law’.
Although people might appear improved in modern times, if granted the freedom (and thus power) to do
what they want, they won’t choose the loving thing they will choose the selfish or even the cruel thing.
This is essentially the classic argument that power corrupts. It also echoes the debate about the extent to
which human nature is corrupt, such as by original sin. Also relevant is psychology like the Stanford
prison experiment and literature like lord of the flies. It is a well-known feature of human psychology that
power is corrupting. The freedom to decide what is good or bad without external supervision of legalistic
laws grants humans more power and thereby corrupts them.
Situation Ethics 2
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