Situation Ethics

PPT 3 A Teleological Approach

(10 mins)

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There is One Intrinsic Good
- Agape
• There is one supreme norm and one intrinsic good –
agape.
• Agape love is the highest form of love
• We accept this by faith – Fletcher calls this Positivism.
• “Greater love has no-one than this that a person lay down
their life for their friends”. (John 15:13)

• Agape love is supreme – other maxims can be ignored if

love is best served.

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Can we live by this?

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Between antinomianism
and legalism
• We can’t follow God’s rules/laws all the time
• God cannot legislate for every situation
• But the thrust of the Bible is personalistic – Jesus
the Parable of the Good Samaritan
• Jesus says ‘go and do likewise’ or ‘make a loving
judgement yourself in this kind of way but you
need to work it out’

Think – was Jesus a situationist?

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Four Working Principles
• Personalism (people come first, not rules)
• Pragmatism (take a case by case approach and don’t
follow absolutes – look at the situation)
• Positivism – judge that agape is the ultimate norm,
and then follow it
• Relativism – apply the one ultimate good (agape) by
making ti relative to consequences

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Principled Relativism
• Notice how Fletcher describes his theory as
‘principled relativism’.
• Sounds like a paradox (apparent contradiction).
• But absolute has three meanings:
- Objective (testable in the world)
- Universal (applies everywhere for all time to all
humans)
- Non-consequentialist.
Q. Which applies to Situation Ethics?

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Situation Ethics – Principled Relativism
• Objective ✔️
• Universal ✔️
• Non-consequentialist ✖️

Answer – as Situation Ethics has one objective, universal principle at its

heart (agape) it is principled , but as it only applies it consequentially
(situation by situation) so it is relativistic in the sense of ‘always made
relative to circumstances)

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Two of the six fundamental
principles
• “The end justifies the means, nothing else’ (Fletcher)
• “Love and Justice are the same”

Think – is this the same as Utilitarianism?

Answer - yes, because in utilitarianism one person can
be sacrificed for the general good and Mill wrote a
whole chapter on justice in his essay

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But…
• There’s a big difference between utilitarianism and
situation ethics
• Situation ethics is idealistic – the norm of agape is
much more demanding than the pursuit of happiness
• We all pursue happiness to some extent but few pursue
sacrificial love (apart from Jesus, and ironically, the
utilitarian Peter Singer who gives away 35% of his
income to the poor)
• In reality we have ‘circles of interest’ – our family and
friends come first

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Does the end justify the means?
• The woman in the prison of war camp
• She gets pregnant in order to go home
• Her child says Fletcher is specially valued
• She did the right thing

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Are love and justice the same?

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Evaluate Fletcher
• Agape is demanding
• Consequentialist theories need wisdom
• William Barclay – the social wisdom in rules
(Mill agrees)

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