Explain the approach of Situation Ethics to moral decision making.

Fletcher accepted that there should be moral rules and guidelines. Moral rules can inform choice but they are secondary to the primary aim of love. Rules cannot always dictate what is right or wrong as there are always exceptional circumstances – each individual situation must be judged by what love requires. If a moral rule is broken in the process, it is morally right to do so. Biblical support can be found for this theory through the teaching of Jesus: 1 John 3v23 – “Believe in the name of his son Jesus, and love one another as he commanded us.”

Fletcher proposed four main principles for moral decision making: pragmatism, relativism, positivism and personalism. Pragmatism looks for the concrete and practical answers to ethical dilemmas. For an action to be right it is necessary that a proposed course of action should work and the proposed action must be practical. As for relativism, advocates of Situation Ethics reject words like ‘never’, ‘always’ and ‘absolute’. There is only one absolute, love, and everything else is relative to it. This is because they believe that circumstances can always throw up exceptions. Relativism does not imply that anything goes. To be relative one has to be relative to something and in the case of Situation Ethics it should be to love. We must always act lovingly - how this is to be applied will depend on the situation.

This theory also takes a positivistic position believing that values are derived voluntarily, not rationally. A man decides on his values, he does not deduce them from nature. Situationists believe in the supremacy of love because faith claims that God is love. It is only in the norm of Christian love that other moral expressions find their justification. Finally, personalism implies that there are no inherently good things, only persons are inherently valuable. Value only ‘happens’ to things. This theory sees ethics as dealing with human relations. Situation Ethics puts people at the centre. The Legalists would ask what the law says whereas Situation Ethics asks how people can be helped. The Christian is committed to love people, not laws. This aspect of Situation Ethics appeals to liberal protestants.

Situation Ethics opposed deductive methods of moral arguments – also so called casuistry. This means that Fletcher rejected starting with a set of rules and deducing what should be done in a particular situation. Like Jesus with the Pharisees, he rejected a legalistic approach to morality. Fletcher, however, did not reject the usefulness of rules. Situationism in its thinking is situated half-way between the two extremes in moral thinking; it is somewhere between antinomianism (the lawless or unprincipled approach to decision making ie a belief that there are no laws for guidance in decision making) and legalism (this is a belief that in moral decision making there are laws for every situation and these laws are unalterable.)

Examples of where Situation Ethics could be applied include euthanasia, or mercy killing. Situation Ethics is easy to apply here. Quite simply, you can dispense with rules about killing, because the most loving thing to do may well be to give someone a peaceful death. What is the use in keeping someone alive to suffer? Relativism is at the heart of the theory. This means that in any situation, when faced with a difficult decision about whether to help someone to die, we need to act out of love, which means ignoring any hard and fast rule and doing what the situation requires.

Another example of where Situation Ethics could be applied is abortion. The Church of England's position, that abortion is evil but may be the 'lesser of two evils' is consistent with a situationist approach. If a woman has been raped, abortion may be an act of love. Although being very closely linked to utilitarianism, Situation Ethics should give quite different results. It doesn't see pleasure as good in itself. However, both Singer's utilitarianism and Fletcher's Situation Ethics say you should act in the 'best interests' of those affected. The real question is what counts as being in someone's best interests. This is where a Christian ethics will include the idea that God created us, instructed us to reproduce etc. Seen in this light, Situation Ethics will start from the belief that it is generally in our interests to create families, nurturing and educating our children. However, in exceptional circumstances the situation might demand a different, loving response. Abortion would be an exception in extreme circumstances, not a method of birth control (as it has become in some countries).

The main challenge to situation ethics within Christendom comes from the Roman Catholic Church, who prefer Natural Law. For example, in the case of Jodie and Mary, conjoined twins, the Catholic Church wanted to let both of the girls die. To kill one, saving the other, would be an evil or bad act, they said. Fletcher would have disagreed. Letting both girls die is not pragmatic. It would be of more use, more practical, to save one girl at the expense of the other.

Overall, what the situationist does have in advance is a general knowledge of what he should do (love), why he should do it (for God's sake), to whom it should be done (his neighbours). He knows that this love is altruistic, not egoistic and should be exercised towards as many neighbours as possible. To quote the Apostle Paul, “Love does no wrong to a neighbour, therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.”