situation ethics <3

what is agape?

- Greek word for unconditional love
- used in the new testament by Jesus when he summarises the commandments as the duty to love God and to love one's neighbour

what were Fletchers views on agape?

- agape is key to situation ethics,
- christianity is based on love both in terms of God's love for creation and the command that people love their neighbour
- Fletcher is partly drawing on previous writers such as William Temple, who argued for an ethic based on love

who did Fletcher dedicate his book Situation Ethics to?

- a taxi driver he met in St Louis, came from a long line of republican voters, but reflected he would be voting Democrat in the upcoming election as he had to:
- 'push his principles aside and do the right thing'

what were the three different approaches to ethics?

- legalism: over-reliance on the rules and laws, by the time of Jesus the pharisees had 613 specific precepts to uphold.
- situationism: for Fletcher is the right approach between two extremes, taking the principles of your community and using them ti 'illuminate' situations
- antinomianism: literally means no laws, believe in freedom to act as one sees fit in any circumstance, leads to anarchy as we don't know what do to from situation to the next.

what are the four working precepts of situationism?

- pragmatism: not theoretical solutions, he requires that a solution works in practice.
- relativism: love is the absolute, everything else is relative to it
- positivism: values are decided by starting with daily in God and positively reasoning what this means in the situation
- personalism: people are the ultimate moral value, ethics is about human relations. "love is of people, by people and for people"

what are Fletcher's six propositions?

- only one thing is intrinsically good, namely love
- the ruling norm of Christian decision is lobe, nothing else
- Love and justice are the same, for justice is love distributed nothing else
- love wills the neighbour good whether we like him or not
- only the ends justifies the means, nothing else
- love's decisions are made situational, not prescriptively

how do you apply situation ethics to euthanasia?

- a terminally ill man is offered expensive medical treatment that will prolong his life for a few months, until his medical insurance runs out. If he refuses medication and dies before the insurance runs out his family will receive the insurance money.
- situational ethics is teleological- what makes an action right is that it leads to a good argument - pragmatism.

is situation ethics a religious theory? yes...

- when Jesus I asked to sum up the whole of the Jewish law, he suggests that the only commandments needed are 'love God' and 'love thy neighbour as yourself'
- in the new testament, Jesus is frequently seen to oppose the legalism of the Pharisees of his day.
- Jesus argues that love is the primary evidence of the genuineness of religious faith. 'everyone will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another'

is situation ethics a religious theory? no...

- argued that Fletcher's reading of the words of Jesus is highly selective, Condemns divorce and adultery quite clearly and references hell more than he references hell.
- Jesus tells his disciples that if they love him they are to obey his commandments, implies other commandments than love
- the interpretation of agape as an unconditional wishing for the best of our neighbour is not explicitly Christian, little difference between situation ethics and act utilitarianism

what are the strengths of situation ethics?

- correct that the legalistic approaches to ethics brings an inflexibility to situations, situationism brings the needed flexibility to take circumstances into account
- enables us to answer difficult moral dilemmas where we may have two conflicting duties.
- agape love is a good principle, saves from personal bias

what are the weaknesses of situation ethics?

- the concept of agape is vague and has no absolute boundaries
- difficult to know when a situation begins and ends - how far in the future is the outcome?
- McQuarrie argues that it is individualistic and is difficult to be applied to a society

case study - Mrs Bergmeier

- Mrs Bergemeir was imprisoned by the Russians at the end of the Second World War and therefore separated from her husband and three children.
- The only reason the Russians would release prisoners was if they were too ill for the camp's doctor to deal with or if they were pregnant. Mrs B persuaded a guard to sleep with her; she conceived a child and was packed off home to Germany.
- A child was born, called Dietrich, who was loved dearly.'