Outline the principles of situation ethics.
For centuries people have based their moral rules on religious grounds, for example the Decalogue or Ten Commandments. However, at the end of the last century an alternate base to people’s morals was offered, called Situation Ethics. Situation Ethics was an idea developed by a man called Joseph Fletcher, an Anglican Theologian. Situation Ethic’s is considered to be a compromise between Anarchy and Totalitarianism. Fletcher rejected the idea that people should follow a set of rules. So, Fletcher developed three ways of making a moral decision. These are the antinomian way, the legalistic way and the situational way.
The antinomian way is a way of making a moral decision without regarding law or principles. To follow this way you would have to make a decision on “gut instinct” and what feels right at the time, on no bases at all. The Antinomian way was where Existentialism surfaced, this was already a principle developed by a 19th Century Danish philosopher called Soren Kierkegaard. His theory was that the best way to make a moral decision was for individuals to find their own unique basis for morality. This argument was based on the foundations that no object or rational basis could be grounded in moral decisions. The antinomian approach basically says that in each unique situation the situation itself determines the ethical solution.
