According to Fletcher, there are only three possible approaches to ethics:
- The legalistic,
- The Antinomian,
- The Situationalist approach.
The legalistic approach has a set of prefabricated moral rules. Christianity and Judaism both follow legalistic ethics. Although an Anglican himself, Fletcher rejects this attitude due to its inflexibility e.g. if we cannot murder, what do we do in a war, or in self defence, a life threatening need for abortion?
The antinomian view doesn’t really follow an ethical system at all. They treat each situation differently so a set of immutable rules are not included in this. While this is the most similar to situation ethics out of the two, Fletcher still criticises it as being “anarchic” and unpredictable.
The situationalist approach is to follow,
“A moral law or violates it according to love’s need”
Situation ethics allows for leeway in scenarios e.g. if a person chased by a murderer comes into a shop seeking refuge the natural urge would be to lie top the murderer to protect the other man. Situation ethics allows for this.
Fletcher sets out four working principles for situation ethics.
- Pragmatism
- Relativism
- Positivism
- Personalism
Pragmatism is when the proposed course of action must actually work. Fletcher suggests that there is no point in acting if the deed is not working to the end, which must be love.
Relativism is where the rules don’t always apply. Can we ever be sure of something when we say ‘definitely’, ‘never’ or ‘perfect’? Fletcher answers, situation ethics,
“relativizes the absolute, it does not absolutize the relative”
He means that situation ethics does not give a definite ending but tells us how to deal with what will definitely happen.
Positivism states that we have to start with a positive choice. You need to want to do a good deed. We cannot answer ‘why should I love?’ Situation ethics is depends on Christians freely choosing faith that God is love, so giving first place to Christian love.
Personalism maintains that situation ethics puts people first. People are more important than rules. “Man was not made for the Sabbath”.
Fletcher then put forward 6 propositions.
First proposition
Only one thing is intrinsically good; namely love: nothing else at all.
Second proposition
The ruling norm of Christian decision is love: nothing else
Third proposition
Love and Justice are the same, for justice is love distributed, nothing else.
Justice is Christian love using its head, calculating its duties, obligations, opportunities, resources...Justice is love coping with situations where distribution is called for.
Fourth proposition
Love wills the neighbour's good, whether we like him or not.
Fifth proposition
Only the end justifies the means, nothing else.
Sixth proposition
Love's decisions are made situationally, not prescriptively.
The final aspect of situation ethics is our conscience. What exactly is it? Cardinal Newman suggests it is the “inner voice of God”. For the situationist, it is simply a description of weighing up the action before it is taken.
ii)
Situation ethics is largely based on doing the most loving action. If we take euthanasia for example, using situation ethics, we can justify the act is merciful. However, as soon as we look at the consequences, we have taken a life, the family can no longer see this person, we cannot turn back if we find a mistake in diagnosis in the autopsy. Proportionalism looks as scenarios in a different light. A proportionalist would look at the consequence implications. A murder is wrong but if we murder to save 20 other people, then although the act is wrong, the outcome is morally acceptable. Sometimes we must look at what the consequences of an action is before we decide on what to do. Bernard Hoose supported this concept and although we do not judge an action through the hedonic calculus, the action is almost incomparable to the consequences. So is situation ethics really applicable for the ‘most’ loving way to act?
Situation ethics has two ways of looking at it and can be approached by religious and moral views.
The situationist would not accept that we all have to be in a loving society for situation ethics to work. They would say that although we must love our neighbour, we could do this without the neighbour necessarily returning the same agape love. This however is flawed, not the concept of loving without being loved, but situation ethics itself. What exactly is ‘the most loving thing’? People do not think in the same way and consequently, we can never define the most loving thing and because of this, situation ethics could lead to all sorts of evil justification in the name of ‘love’.
“Love your neighbour as yourself.” Love does no harm to its neighbour. Therefore love is the fulfilment of the .
Religious leaders would look at it in a way to act as Jesus taught and to be loving and kind to your neighbour. But is this outdated, with situation ethics depending on agape love and there being people in the world that do not honour this so we cannot fully follow the Church’s teachings.
Situation ethics can be used to justify anything because it is individualistic. Why did Hitler try and ‘cleanse’ Germany? Partly because he thought it was the right thing to do. Why didn’t Hitler think what he was doing was wrong? Each person thinks differently and we cannot justify situation ethics if technically it allows this kind of action. Hitler cleansed his country because he thought it would be good for the German people.
In conclusion, we must reject situation ethics due to its potentially dangerous nature. Although Fletcher intended it to be a fair system, he did not anticipate abuse of its structure and because of this, the way of analysing an action is not by situation ethics.
Fletcher, ‘Situation Ethics, The New Morality’
