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Strengths
- Supposedly compatible both with secular society and religions
- It is nicknamed the 'middle way' between antinomianism and legalism, thereby avoiding both the pitfalls of prescribed rules and ethical anarchy.
- It is flexible and relativist, so helps people to make hard choices.
- It is based on agapeistic love (unconditional love for others), which most people would say was a good thing.
- It avoids the conflict of duty which exists in legalistic ethics- in situation ethics there is always a simple way of resolving the problem (for example if a murderer asked where to find your mother, legalistic systems would say that you had to tell the murderer, as lying is forbidden. In situation ethics, the most loving action would be to protect your mother by lying)
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Weaknesses
- It is based on Jesus' teachings, so many atheists may not wish to follow it.
- Situation ethics is an unprincipled relativist system, so could allow for any actions- surely torture is always inherently wrong, no matter what the situation?
- 'Love' is very subjective, and naturally differs from person to person. A ********* may justify his actions by saying that they were done with love.
- The system is consequentialist, and it is not always possible to predict the outcome of an action.
- Some may say that the system is outdated- it was, after all, conceived in the 1960's, when people were still reveling in their sexual and moral freedoms. Society is different now.
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Opportunities
- Proposed by Joseph Fletcher in his book 'situation ethics' published in the 1960's. This decade was a time of great social change- a sexual revolution took place which made contraception more widely available, and peoples freedoms began to be observed more. What is more, the world was discontented with the old ethical guidelines (which they thought led them to the Vietnam war). Situation ethics rose up out of this change.
- Fletcher appealed to the philosopher Rudolph Butmann, who stripped the bible down to it's key message- 'love one another'
- At the same time in England, John Robinson was coming to the same conclusions as Fletcher. Robinson believed that love was at the core of what it was to be christian, as Jesus never gave a list of set rules.
- Also developed by Hoose in his modification of situation ethics- proportionalism. This was a mixture of situation ethics and natural moral law. 'It is never right to go against a principle unless there is a proportionate reason to justify it'.
- The 4 working principles- Pragmatism, Personalism,Positivism and Relativism (+6 principles of agape)
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Threats
- Pope Pius XII said that situation ethics was utterly incompatible with Christianity. He believed that the only way to be Christian was to follow all of God's rules, which apply in all circumstances.
- William Barclay brought up many problems of situation ethics. Firstly he said that the examples which Fletcher gave to explain Situation ethics (a fire with the chance to only save one person, Mrs. Bergmeir etc.) were extreme cases, and the chances of actually being confronted with these choices were very slim. Barclay also argued that Fletcher was too positive about human nature- we are naturally inclined to make decisions based on social, economic and environmental factors- so can therefore not always prescribe to 'the most loving action'.
- In the bible, law and love are seen as mutually exclusive- Paul writes that love is fulfilling the law. If this is true, we need rules in order to do the most loving thing.
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