Situation Ethics: Five Things You Didn’t Know

Joseph Fletcher started the theory of situation ethics upon the bases that “Love is the ultimate
law”. He believed there was only three kinds of ethical theory in which could be used to approach an
ethical issue:
- A Legalist would go into an ethical dilemma following a set of moral rules and laws put in
place for every possible situation. However Fletcher believed that this creates a
complex manual which would be etheir too unrealistic to use or it would be impossible to have included in it every situation and type (murder, murder in self-defense, warfare, revenge etc.).
- An antinomian does not follow any ethical system as such, they enter a moral delimea as if that
situation was unique and therefore would make a decision spontaneously. Fletcher believes this is an
unacceptable approach as it is unprincipled.
- A situationist would enter an individual situation with the laws and principles of their
community however would be willing to put them aside if love best served doing so.
Example: A murder knocks on your door and you are hiding the person he is hunting. He asks if
this person is in your house. A legalistic would likely not be able to lie, therefore helping the
murder to kill someone, an antinomian response would be unpredictable as such but a situationist
would be able to put the law/rules aside and lie if love best served doing so, therefore saving this
persons life.

A situationist looks to the end which is the most loving result and therefore it is a consequentist theory, whereby an action is right if the ends justifies the means. It is the responsibility of the decision maker to analysis a situation and the possible ends. Nevertheless when doing so they should use the six fundamental and four working principals to illuminate a situation.

Situation Ethics follows ‘Six Fundamental Principals’:

- Love’s decisions are made situationally, not prescriptively.
- Only one thing is intrinsically good; namely love.
- The ruling norm of Christian decision making is love.
- Love and justice are the same, for justice is love distributed.
- Love wills the neighbour’s good, whenever we like him or not.
- Only the end justifies the means

Fletcher presumed the Four Working Principles were already in place and being followed else situation ethics would not work.
- Pragmatism – The proposed course of action must be practical and work towards the end which is
love. Example: Two conjoined twins will die unless they are separated, however separation will mean
killing one. A Roman Catholic would argue that killing is wrong and they should both be left to
die naturally, a situationist would say this is totally impractical and saving one is better than none.
- Positivism – Situation ethics relies on Christians freely believing that agape is love therefore
chosing that God is love.
- Personalism – The legalist puts law first and thinks people should work to law, the situationist
puts people first and believes laws should be for the benefit of the people.
- Relativism – Situation ethics is relativistic, there are no fixed rules. Murder may be generally
considered wrong but in a few cases it may be the least worse (most loving) option therefore is
‘never’ always wrong.

A situationist would seek the:
“The greatest agape for the greatest number”