fletcher gives the example of a mother buying her sexually active underage child contraception
the four working principles are pragmatism, relativism, positivism, personalism
the six principles
love is the only absolute
agape is selfgiving love
justice is love distributed
love has nofavourites
love justifies it's means
situational
fletcher is bad and naughty and says downs syndrome people are not people and that individuals shouldn't feel guilty about putting a down's syndrome baby away
christianity and situation ethics
luke - 'love your neighbour as yourself'
john - 'love one another just as i have loved you'
1 corinthians - 'faith, hope and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.'
traditional christian thinkers tend to reject situation ethics, eg pope pius XII called situation ethics an individualistic and subjective appeal to the concrete circumstances to justify decisions in opposition to the natural law or gods will
but, jesus did set aside some rules as the personmattersmore, eg touching the sick
situation ethics may condone evil acts as it teaches particular actions dont have an inherent moral value. goodness or badness depends on the eventual result