Situation Ethics
- Created by: ebcrankomills
- Created on: 27-05-19 11:09
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- Situation Ethics
- Four working presuppositions
- Pragmatism
- based on experience rather than theory
- Fletcher doubts strict philosophicl systems or ideologies are much help in ethics.
- Relativism
- There are many different degrees of relativism.
- Based on making the absolute laws of christian ethics relative.
- Fletcher sees relativism in the behaviour pf Jesus in rejecting the fixed rule o mentality of the Pharises=es.
- The situationist approach to relativism is that all decisions must be relative to love
- Situation ethics 'relativises the absolute, it does not absolute the relative.'
- Positivism
- Religious knowledge orr belief can only be approached in one of two way: natural and logical positism.
- Natural Positvism reason ddeduces faith from human experience or natural phenomena.
- Theological positivism: faith statements are made and people act in a way that is reasonable in the light of these statements
- Reason is not the basis for faith but it works within faith
- Pragmatism
- Three approaches to moral thinking
- Legalistic
- Set of predefined rules and regulations
- Christianity shows legalistic features based on biblical commandments and the precepts expounded by Aquinas
- Aquinas argued that they were discoverable in nature and not human ordinations.
- Fletcher rejected these legalistic approaches that were based on fixed laws
- Antinomian
- The reverse of legalistic ethics, there are no rules or regulations or prrinciple of any kind.
- Each attempt at moral decision making is unique and follows no patterns or systems.
- Fletcher was heavily critical of antinomian ethics
- 'it is literally unprincipled, purely ad hoc and casual. They follow no forecastable course from one situation to another. They are anarchic, without a rule.'
- Situational
- Moral actions depend purely on the situation
- A situationist enters a moral dilemma with ethics and rules but they are prepared to set aside these rules if love seems better served by doing so.
- Reason is the instrument of moral judgements but disagrees that the good is to be discerned from the nature or love of things.
- Heavily influenced by Christian theologians who took a different approach to deducing moral guidance from the bible rather than simply looking for rules or principles.
- He was influenced by Bultmann, Barth and Bonhoeffer
- Bultmann- argued against the idea that Jesus sought to establish some new ethical ideology.
- Barth- God's commanding can only be this individual, concrete and specific example of commanding not only a rule. He was not opposed to the idea of morally wrong actions.
- Bonhoeffer- he thought that determining the will of God in ant concrete situation is based on two things: the need of one;s neighbou and the model of Jesus.
- All we can do is act according to these two things and offer our conduct to God's judgment, mercy and grace.
- Legalistic
- Six propositions
- First
- 'only one thing is intrinsically good; namely love, nothing else at all.'
- Actions aren't intrinsically good or evil, they always form part of a chain of cause and effect
- Love is the only universal, the only thing to oblige us in conscience.
- Second
- 'the ruling norm of christian decision is love nothing else.'
- Fletcher believes that the commandments are not absolute, Jesus broke them when love demanded it.
- Love replaces law, it is not equally by other =any other law
- Third
- 'love and justice are the same, for justice is love distributed, nothing else.'
- Love and justice cannot be separated.
- Love takes everything into account, it is not partial.
- Fourth
- 'Love wills the neighbours good, whether we like him or not.'
- The love that Fletcher is concerned about is not a matter of feeling but is a matter of attitude.
- Agape love is unconditional for nothing is required in return.
- Agape love goes out to everyone not just those that we like but also those that we do't like.
- Fifth
- 'Only the end justifies the means, nothing else.'
- Considering moral actions without reference to their ends is a haphazard approach.
- Love is the goal or end of an act that justifies any means to achieve that goal.
- Sixth
- 'Love's decisions are made situationally. not prescriptively.'
- Love decides on each situation as it arises without a set of laws to guide it
- We must be in the moment in order to make a free decision.
- If an action will bring about an end that dserves love most then it is right.
- First
- Agape
- Utilitarians see the greatest happiness as the highest end
- Kantians look to the summum bonum, others look to love specifically agape.
- Christianity is a religion based on love, a God that is love and agape.
- Bishop john Robinson argued that, 'there is no one ethical system that can claim to be christian.'
- Bultmann argued that Jesus had no eethics about from, 'love thy neighbour as thyself.'
- Agape love is the highest end.
- Joseph Fletcher (1905-1991)
- love is what morality should serve
- when making a moral decision you should
- 'the situationist follows a moral law that violates it according to love's need.'
- A teleological ethical theory
- Conscience
- The error is thinking of the conscience as a noune insteead of a verb
- It is not an internalised value.
- In no way does it guide human action
- Fletcher adopts Aquinas' thinking that the conscience is reason-making moral judgements, but he rejects his other moral thoughts.
- It does not simply review our actions, but is the process of making the decision.
- Four working presuppositions
- Conscience
- The error is thinking of the conscience as a noune insteead of a verb
- It is not an internalised value.
- In no way does it guide human action
- Fletcher adopts Aquinas' thinking that the conscience is reason-making moral judgements, but he rejects his other moral thoughts.
- It does not simply review our actions, but is the process of making the decision.
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