Situation ethics ppt

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Situation Ethics Principled Relativism


Background • Joseph Fletcher wrote his book in 1966 • He claims a moment of revelation when listening to a St Louis

cabbie determine to ‘lay principle aside and do the right thing’ • Argues for one absolute principle – love (Greek agape meaning

sacrificial love) • Sees his theory as lying between antinomianism (no law) and

legalism (adherence to law) • Can be seen as a form of liberal Christian ethics, taken up by

Bishop John Robinson in Honest to God


Fletcher, Robinson, Tillich •  Fletcher and Robinson sought an ethical theory which would bring people back

towards making Christian moral decisions, but which didn’t have the legalism associated with religion.

•  Robinson said that Situation Ethics was for “Man come of age”: it was for people

who were moving away from having to be told what to do by God, and yet it still had the Christian flavour. It was between legalism and antinomianism.

•  Robinson and Tillich suggested that God could be understood as ‘the ground of our being’, of ultimate significance, but not a deus ex machina, a supernatural being who intervenes in the world from outside it. In other words God is part of people (immanent) not this almighty transcendent being who barks instructions at us to follow (as in Divine Command Theory).


THREE ETHICAL POSITIONS

LEGALISTIC • ABSOLUTE

• NO EXCEPTIONS • Divine Command Theory

SITUATIONAL •  ONE ABSOLUTE

(AGAPE) •  RELATIVISTIC

•  Consequen@alism

ANTINOMIAN •  TOTAL AUTONOMY

•  NO RULES • NO ABSOLUTES


Agape • Unconditional Love (1 JOHN 4:16, 21)

• Derived from hesed in the Old Testament (EXODUS 34:6)

• Embodied in Jesus Christ (JOHN 1:14)

• An act of will or disposition – “… goodwill at work in partnership with reason” in seeking the “neighbour’s best interest with a careful eye to all the factors in a situation”. Fletcher


Four working principles • Pragmatism • Personalism • Positivism • Relativism


Pragmatism

• For a course of action to be right it must be practical

•  “A thought or action must work” (P. 42)


Relativism • Fletcher calls his theory ‘principled relativism’, because ‘it

relativises the absolute, it doesn’t absolutise the relative” • By this he means that the absolute principle of agape must be

made relative to every contingent situation in order to discover what is right.

•  It is a form of relativism in application, not in the principle itself (agape) which never changes is meaning.


Positivism • Fletcher uses a new meaning of positivism, not the same as for

example, AJ Ayer uses in ‘logical positivism’ meaning ‘empirically provable’.

• Theological positivism means you have to start with a positive choice or commitment - faith comes before reason.


Personalism • People come first. • Fletcher argues that ‘the legalist is a what asker (what does the

law say?) whereas the situationist is a who asker (who is to be helped?) pg50

• He sees his theory in this sense having echoes of Kant’s second maxim “treat person as ends, never as means’ pg 51

• We need to respect individual autonomy, choice and dignity and we always see their welfare and needs as paramount


The six fundamental principles • Confusingly Fletcher talks of six fundamental principles, as well

as the four working principles of pragmatism, positivism, personalism and relativism.

• Here we consider four of the most important: beginning with “love only is always good’.

• Fletcher argues that only love has intrinsic value because it helps people – it is the purpose of any action which defines its goodness not the nature of the act itself. A lie is only good or bad with reference to the loving purpose of the lie or its lack of love.


Love is the only norm • Fletcher argues that ‘the ruling norm of Christian decision is

love, nothing else’. • Love replaces the law in Christian ethics. • Fletcher rejects Roman Catholic natural law as ‘there are no

(natural) universal laws held by all men everywhere at all times’ • Fletcher therefore attracts the opposition of the Catholic Church

– in Veritatis Splendor, for example.


Love and Justice are the same •  ‘Justice is love distributed, nothing else’. • The injustices we see in the world, of starving children in Africa

for example are due, says Fetcher to lack of love shown by the food-rich west.

• We see our neighbours as those we know, whereas our real neighbours encompass the whole of humanity.


Love and liking are no the same •  ‘Love wills the neighbour’s good, whether we like him or not’. • Fletcher cites Martin Luther King’s campaign of non-violence in

the segregated south of America. He didn’t like the oppressor, but taught we should love them with a ‘creative, redemptive good will to all men’.

• When King marched, he often faced violence but did not hit back.


The end of love justifies the means •  ‘Only the end justifies the means, nothing else’. • When Dietrich Bonhoeffer joined the resistance in Nazi

Germany, he justified lying and assassination by arguing the good end justifed the evil means.

• Fletcher similarly argues the end always justifies the means. • The bomb plot that caused Bonhoeffer’s arrest and execution in

1945 is dramatised in the film Valkyrie


One of Fletcher’s examples •  Try to use Fletcher’s examples if you can in your work, rather than your

own. Don’t forget to talk about them as well, they shouldn’t just be stuck in randomly

•  Never write out the whole story, just refer to it. For example •  Fletcher used the example “Sacrificial Adultery” where a POW woman

debates on whether to have commit adultery in order to get pregnant and so be released and sent back to her family.

•  The point Fletcher was making was that surely it was the best thing (the most loving thing) for the mother to break the Commandment “Do not commit adultery” in order to get home to her children. This has to be the most loving thing for her and all even though it breaks one of God’s commandments. Surely God would not think this immoral as this is not why he gave that particular law in the first place?


Were the bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki jutifiable? • On Aug 6th 1945 the Enola Gay dropped the atom bomb on

Hiroshima. • When he saw the mushroom cloud Capt Lewis exclaimed ‘my

God, what have we done?’. • But 126,000 American POWs were due to be executed when the

first American set foot on Japanese soil. • The Japanese honour code included fight to the death and

kamakaze pilots who crashed specially designed human flying bombs.


Even Eisenhower had second thoughts •  "During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious

of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of 'face'. The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude..."

•  - Dwight Eisenhower, Mandate For Change, pg. 380


Apply Fletcher’s ethic • To the idea of rendition for torture • To the argument for euthanasia • Or another morally difficult case in the newspapers


Summary – situation ethics •  It is an attempt to link Christianity with new morality for

‘man come of age’ (Robinson) •  It focuses on Jesus’parable of the Good Samaritan and

opposition to Pharisaic legalism •  It rejects absolute rules as it solves moral dilemmas

situationally and circumstantially •  It focuses on positivism and personalism •  It is a form of Christian ethic – ‘principled relativism’ is

how Fletcher describes it


1.  Barclay said the examples Fletcher used to illustrate situation ethics are extreme cases. He

asked how often people had to make life and death decisions on which situation ethics seemed to be based? He said: “It is much easier to agree that extraordinary situations need extraordinary measures than to think that there are no laws for ordinary life.” (Ethics in a Permissive Society, 1971)

2.  He said that the suggestion that laws could be abandoned if needed was too optimistic. Humans needs laws for protection etc and how would people know exactly when it was “the most loving thing” to abandon them? A circumstance to one, may not be to another.

3.  He argued that it is hard for individuals to make their own moral decisions in every situation. We can be swayed by emotion or fear and persuade ourselves that we are doing the most loving thing when really we are doing the thing that suits ourselves the most.

William Barclay’s Criticisms


Situa@on ethics is subjec<ve because decisions are made from within the situa@on as it is perceived to be.

Situa@on ethics could prove unworkable because it isn’t easy to determine all the consequences of an ac@on.

It is individualis<c because humans see things from their own perspec@ve. There is a danger that the ideals of uncondi@onal love may be polluted by a selfish human tendency and people using it as an excuse for not obeying the rules. How many parents can show equal love to strangers as to their own children?

This argument made Robinson withdraw his support for Situation Ethics

Situa@on ethics seems to be prepared to accept any ac<on at all if it fits the

required criteria. What is believed to be a loving end by some could jus@fy ac@ons that many people would regard as wrong.

Pius XII


1.  Give 3 reasons why Situation Ethics could be seen as a Christian ethic

2.  Give 1 of Fletcher’s examples of Situation Ethics and explain the point of it

3.  Give 3 strengths of Situation Ethics 4.  Give 3 weaknesses of Situation Ethics 5.  Why did Pope Pius XII oppose situation ethics in 1952?

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Date post:	17-Feb-2017
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