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SITUATION ETHICS - Coggle Diagram
SITUATION ETHICS
Legalism
- Theories that have rules for everything
- Even rules for bending the rules
- Commonly found within Western religious ethical theories
Antinomianisim
- Lacking in set rules - moral knowledege is a special type of knowledge
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Fletcher - Introduction
- He was an active Christian in the Episcopal Church because of its social teachings rather than the doctrines
- Christian morality needed to be reassessed
- Church membership was in decline, due to a range of social conditions
- Insecurity arising from a perceived absence of God during the two World Wars
- The rise of science + displacement of God
- Weakening of family/religious bonds through widely avaliable contraception
- Failure of systems such as NML to provide realistic answers to a growing number of issues
- Church has no beliefs other than 'agape'
- Fletchers approach = Teleological approach - morality is not about the rules, only about the rule of love
- Agape = the highest form of love, charity, the love of God for man
- Mark 12:31 - 'love your neighbour as you love yourself'
- Joseph Fletcher - Four working principles:
- They are not in themselves rules but they are framework for determining the use of agape in each situation and to know what the most loving thing to do is
Pragmatism: something that works, so the good is 'what works'/maximises love (essentially what has value. If it does not work + has no value then it has no point
- Uses a Quote from William James, who himself was a pragmatist, and is inspired by it
Relativism: **'the situationist avoids words like 'never' + 'perfect' + 'always' + 'complete' as he avoids the plague'**
- Everything is relative to the situation - sometimes it's right, sometimes it is wrong, depending on the situation e.g. 'do not lie'
- Can't always justify lying
- Only love is constant; everything else is a variable
Positivism: Ethical norms are not rational; they are held as an act of judgement + faith
- Positivism holds that agape is the only intrinsically good thing
- E.g. you choose something because you like it, you do not have to justify your choice
- It is equally unverifiable
Personalism: putting people at the centre of concern +not things
- It is immoral to love things + not people
- Situationists say 'who is to be helped'
- Personal element is emphasised by the belief that God became incarnate as a person
Fletcher - Conscience
- Traditional understandings of conscience are mistaken
- Conscience is often seen as a thing - a noun
- This either be the voice of God within us - according to catholics
6 Propositions
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- Love + justice are the same
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