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SITUATION ETHICS P1 - Coggle Diagram
SITUATION ETHICS P1
Joseph Fletcher
- American Professor
- Noble contributor in the field of bio-ethics
- He supported the potential value + rightness of abortion, infanticide, eugenics + cloning
- He argued that having no life at all is better than some of the forms in which life is led
- He rejected legalism, which is the view that it is always right to obey the moral law
- He also rejected antinomianism, which is the view that the laws put in place by societies should be rejected
- Fletcher argued that morality should be based on Christian love, which he saw as a midpoint between legalism + antinomianism
Situationism
- Reason is the instrument of moral judgement
- Acknowledges that rules can be useful guidelines but they are not unbreakable
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Agape
- The highest form of love, charity. The love of God for man
Teleological approach
An ethical theory which argues the rightness or wrongness of an action according to its consequences
- The term is derived from the the Greek 'telos' meaning end/purpose
Pragmatism
- Something that is pragmatic is something that works, so the good is quite simply, 'what works'/maximises love
- Essentially, what has value
- Fletcher quotes approvingly from William James - 'A pragmatist turns his back upon fixed principles'
Relativism
- Everything is relative to the situation, although, by this Flecther means that so-called absolute commands become relative to the situation - e.g. 'do not commit adultery', 'do not life'
- Sometimes it will maximise love, but that does not mean that you can always justify adultery or lying
- Only love is constant, everything else is a variable
- Fletcher - 'we are always commanded to act lovingly, but how we do it depends on our own responsible estimate of the situation'
Positivism
- Ethical norms are not rational: they are held as an act of judgement + of faith
- e.g. think of any kind of art, music and literature that you enjoy
- In effect you choose paintings, art and books that you like simply because you like them, and you do not have to justify you choices
- This is because these choiced cannot be shown to be reasonable or unreasonable by any empirical test
- So when we say that 'God is love', this is simply a choice, and is equally unverifiable by any kind of test
- Fletcher means that faith has to come first - 'Christians...understand love in terms of God as seen in Christ. We love, because he first loved us. This obviously is a faith foundation for love'
- Positivism holds that agape is the only intrinsically good thing
Personalism
- This means simply that situation ethics puts people at the centre of concern and not things
- It is immoral to love things + not people
- Whereas the legalist says 'what does the law say?' the situationist says 'who is to be helped?'
- People are to be loved, not rules
- Real existence lies in personal relationships
- The personal element is emphasised by the belief that God became incarnate as a person (Jesus) and that humans are made imago dei - God's image
The 4 working principles
- To help determine what the most loving thing to do in any situation, Fletcher developed 4 working principles
- These are not in themselves rules, but rather a framework for determining the use of agape in each situation + to know what the most loving thing to do is