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Situation ethics
- Essay length: 1538 words
- Submitted: 07/03/2010
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Marked by teacher:
David Moss
Teacher essay summary
3/5
This first essay is clearly expressed and, at first, gets the main points about situation ethics mostly correct. It is to be credited for showing knowledge of various thinkers sympathetic to situation ethics.
Attempt is made to evaluate situation ethics at significant length. These evaluations are mostly lucidly expressed, though the confusion of the thoughts makes them difficult to understand sometimes. Unfortunately the evaluations of situation ethics are almost all hopelessly mistaken and undermine the sense that the student really understands the theory.
The second question is less inaccurate than the previous one, because it relies heavily on quoted material from other critics. Thus it also lacks individual evaluation from the student. This is ironic as the first question would have been more suited to mere quotes and little exposition, whereas this answer requires more evaluation. There is an attempt to offer original views in the conclusion, though these points are largely detached (indeed, at odds with) the claims made in the rest of the argument. Unfortunately, the evaluation that is offered in this conclusion is pretty much nonsense- either irrelevant or internally contradictory.
Marked by teacher David Moss 31/03/2012
The first 200 words of this essay...
Situation Ethics, is a Christian ethical theory that was developed by Joseph Fletcher. It basically says that sometimes other moral principles can be overruled in some situations if love is the final consequence of an action. "Love is the ultimate law"1. Situation ethics underlines the importance of the individual in making moral decisions. The general understanding towards situation ethics has been taken up by the likes of Tillich, Fletcher and Bultman. Bultman believed that jesus didn't work to any ethical theory and that he had no ethics. Tillich wrote that 'the law is the ultimate law because it is the negation of law' meaning that the moral principle is based on christian love and that it should be applied to real life situations.
Joseph Fletcher developed the idea of making a moral decision for a particular situation. He wrote the book 'Situation Ethics' in 1996 explaining his theory. He stated that it was better that a person made a decision on what moral course of action they should follow rather than follow a set of unwritten rules they hardly know anything about. He believed that God doesn't want us to follow and conform to rules like robots as
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MbT essay summary
3/5
This first essay is clearly expressed and, at first, gets the main points about situation ethics mostly correct. It is to be credited for showing knowledge of various thinkers sympathetic to situation ethics.
Attempt is made to evaluate situation ethics at significant length. These evaluations are mostly lucidly expressed, though the confusion of the thoughts makes them difficult to understand sometimes. Unfortunately the evaluations of situation ethics are almost all hopelessly mistaken and undermine the sense that the student really understands the theory.
The second question is less inaccurate than the previous one, because it relies heavily on quoted material from other critics. Thus it also lacks individual evaluation from the student. This is ironic as the first question would have been more suited to mere quotes and little exposition, whereas this answer requires more evaluation. There is an attempt to offer original views in the conclusion, though these points are largely detached (indeed, at odds with) the claims made in the rest of the argument. Unfortunately, the evaluation that is offered in this conclusion is pretty much nonsense- either irrelevant or internally contradictory.
