situation ethics

Subdecks (2)

Cards (23)

  • agape love: unconditional Christian love
  • six fundamental principles:
    • love only is always good
    • love is the only norm
    • love + justice are the same
    • love is not liking
    • love justifies its mean
    • love decides there and then
  • pragmatism means moral actions must work towards or achieve some realistic goal
  • personalism is the idea that people come first in moral situations, not rules or ideas
  • positivism means first place is given to Christian love, rooted in faith
  • relativism means morality is relative to the situation + there are no fixed laws which must always be obeyed
  • Joseph Fletcher composed situation ethics in 1966
  • Fletcher believed a reassessment of Christian morality was necessary due to the decline in Church membership as a result of social changes:
    • perceived absence of God during the horrors of the World Wars
    • rise in science + its incompatibility with religious beliefs
    • weakening family + religious bonds; media impact
    • failures of deontological systems to provide realistic answers to new ethical problems
  • Fletcher's approach is teleological and relative. it is not particularly linked with any Catholic denominations/humanism, it is instead personal + contextual
  • four working principles:
    • pragmatism
    • relativism
    • positivism
    • personalism