Situation Ethics

• agape

  universal self giving love

  the only rule for morality, always strive for the most loving outcome (agapeic calculus)

  fletcher uses the example of the mum giving her sexually active child contraception
• 4 working principles

  pragmatism- does it work in practise
• 4 working principles

  positivism- value judgement, most loving outcome
• 4 working principles

  personalism- put people first, over rules
• 4 working principles

  relativism- ignore rules, in favour of the most loving outcome
• 6 propositions

  agape / love is the only absolute
• 6 propositions

  justice is love distributed
• 6 propositions

  agape is self giving love
• 6 propositions

  love has no favourites (no preferential treatment)
• 6 propositions

  the most loving action always depends on the situation
• 6 propositions

  love must be the end, not always the means
• strengths

  flexible, the answer always depends
• strengths

  easy to understand since it only really has one rule, agape
• strengths

  allows moral agents to take responsibility for their own actions, not just blindly defer to rules
• weaknesses

  goes against some church teachings
• weaknesses

  sometimes totally condones evil, like hiroshima and ableism
• weaknesses

  agapeic calculus can sometimes be basically impossible since not all outcomes can be predicted
• Situation Ethicists may consider what the Jesus said, whether they think he was a pacifist or not will greatly effect their answer
• Fletcher would stress that there are no rules compelling you to act a certain way, you have to use agape to assess each case on their own
• Situation Ethics is teleological meaning it focuses on the purpose or outcome of a moral situation
• Fletcher says there's no intrinsically good actions, everything depends
• Situation ethics can seem like relativism, but it isn't. although it always depends, relativism says there's no universals, fletcher says there's one, which is love.
• Fletcher can be very extreme and can condone evil "a Down's is not a person", or condoning things like killing on the basis of loving outcomes
• Situation Ethics is scripture based / Christian.

  • book of Luke "love the Lord your God... and love your neighbour as yourself"
  • John "I give you a new commandment, that you love one another"
  • 1 Corinthians "love never ends... And now faith, hope and love abide these three; and the greatest of these is love"
• What is Agapeic Calculus?


  Method to work out most loving course of action: Weigh up intended outcome, method used and consequences of action.
• An ethical theory put forward by Joseph Fletcher which is teleological and based on ‘agape’ or ‘love’.