Fletcher's Situation Ethics
Religious Studies: OCR A Level, topic 2.2.1
Fletcher's Situation Ethics - Agape & Six Propositions
Joseph Fletcher argued that love was what morality should serve. He thought that when making a moral decision, you should be prepared to set aside rules if it seemed that love would be better served by doing so.
The concept of agape
- Love should always come first even if it means being disobedient in the eyes of the law.
- The 'love' Fletcher is referring to is agape - the unconditional love that all Christians should have for one another.
- 'The situationist follows a moral law or violates it according to love's need' (Fletcher, Situation Ethics).
- He argued that in the New Testament, Jesus taught his message of love not only through his teachings to his disciples but also through his actions.
The first and second proposition
- Fletcher gives six propositions to his theory:
- Love is the only thing that is intrinsically good. Because of this, actions are good/evil depending on how far they promote the most loving outcome.
- Love is the ruling norm in ethical decision making and replaces all laws.
The third and fourth proposition
- Love and justice are the same things - justice is love that is distributed.
- In Fletcher's view, most moral problems are just tension between “justice” and “love”. To Fletcher, acting justly is acting in the name of love.
- Love wills the neighbour’s good regardless of whether the neighbour is liked or not.
The fifth and sixth proposition
- Love is the goal or end of the act and that justifies any means to achieve that goal.
- The end goal must be the most loving outcome. So anything done to try and achieve that end goal is justified.
- Love decides on each situation as it arises without a set of laws to guide it.
- There are no governing rules. In each context, the right action will be the one that brings the most loving outcome.
Fletcher's Situation Ethics - Four Working Principles
Fletcher proposed four working principles of his situationism.
Pragmatism
- It is based on experience rather than on theory.
Relativism
- It is based on making the absolute laws of Christian ethics relative.
Positivism
- It begins with belief in the reality and importance of love.
Personalism
- Persons are at the centre of situation ethics - not laws or anything else.
Test yourself on Fletcher's Situation Ethics
What did Fletcher say of agape in his Situation Ethics?
What is at the centre of Fletcher's situation ethics?
What belief does Fletcher's situation ethics begin with?