Eduqas Situation ethics A*-A summary notes

Eduqas
Ethics

This page contains A*/A grade level summary revision notes for the Situation ethics topic.

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For AO1 you need to know:

Fletcher’s rejection of other approaches within ethics
Fletcher’s situation ethics
Application of situation ethics to homosexual relationships
Application of situation ethics to polyamorous relationships

For AO2 you need to be able to debate:

The degree to which agape is the only intrinsic good
Whether Fletcher’s situation ethics promotes immoral behaviour
The extent to which Situation ethics promotes justice
The effectiveness of Situation ethics in dealing with ethical issues
Whether agape should replace religious rules
The extent to which Situation ethics provides a practical basis for making moral decisions for both religious believers and non-believers

AO1 Situation ethics

Fletcher’s rejection of other ethical approaches

Fletcher begins by rejecting the traditional approaches to Christian ethics which he divides into what he claims are two extremes.
Legalism is the traditional approach to religious ethics. It claims there is an absolutist set of moral rules which everyone must follow regardless of the situation.
Fletcher rejects this as too inflexible, for failing to take the situation into account.
Antinomianism is the idea that there should be no rules at all. It is held by those who believe justification by faith and grace save someone regardless of their actions. So they don’t even need to follow Christian moral laws.
Fletcher rejects this as it leads to moral chaos due to no one having any shared moral standard.
Situationism is Fletcher’s middle ground which he intends to have the strengths of each approach without any of the downsides to either approach.
It has the strength of legalism in that it provides something which is absolute for everyone to follow, but it’s not a set of rules, it is the moral principle of agape. This principle has to be worked out in the situation itself. This avoids the downside of antinomianism of having no shared moral standard, but has its strength of taking the situation into account.
Agape is unconditional selfless love of your neighbour.
So, an action is good if it maximises agape, if it has the most loving outcome possible.
This makes situation ethics consequentialist, meaning it is the consequences of an action that make it good or bad. Fletcher remarked that he intended his theory to be a religious version of utilitarianism.
The theory is relativistic in that it claims actions are right or wrong relative to their production of agape.
Conscience – Fletcher doesn’t think conscience is a ‘noun’ – he says it is not a thing that tells you what is good or bad. It’s not an inner moral compass with a set list of rules.
Conscience is a verb – the process of figuring out what the loving thing to do is in a situation.
To illustrate the difference between his and traditional approaches, Fletcher pointed to the example of a family hiding from bandits whose baby starts crying. If they are discovered, they will all be killed including the baby. Fletcher questions whether it would be more loving to kill the baby and at least that way save the rest of the family. That might have a more loving outcome. Whereas, traditional christian ethics would say that killing babies is intrinsically wrong and can never be justified no matter the situation.
If you do nothing and leave it to the bandits, at least you wouldn’t have killed anyone. However, Fletcher’s ethics is consequentialist – it claims the consequences are what matter, not the action itself or who is doing it.
Traditional ethics claims actions are intrinsically right or wrong because of things like the 10 commandments which simply claim legalistically that we ought to do or never do certain actions, like murder.
However, Fletcher points out that Jesus said loving your neighbour as yourself is the ‘greatest’ commandment. Fletcher thinks this commandment takes precedence over others. So, if it is loving to kill your neighbour, then that is justified according to the greatest commandment.
Fletcher thought Jesus himself was often situationist. When asked whether Christians should keep the sabbath, Jesus answered ‘the sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath’. This indicates that the rules should bend to our needs, not our needs to the rules. So, Fletcher concludes his approach is more true to the approach to ethics of Jesus than legalism is.

Agape as the ‘boss’ principle of situation ethics

Agape is unconditional selfless love of your neighbour.
So, an action is good if it maximises agape – if it has the most loving outcome possible.
This has the strength of legalism in that it provides something which is absolute for everyone to follow, but it’s not a set of rules it is a moral principle. This means it has to be worked out in the situation itself. This avoids the downside of antinomianism of having no shared moral standard, but has its strength of taking the situation into account.
This makes situation ethics consequentialist, meaning it is the consequences of an action that make it good or bad.

The four working principles

The four working principle are concepts that we must be mindful of when actually following and applying situation ethics to moral actions.
Pragmatism. This means practicality. We must take the situation into account and figure out which rules or principles ‘work’ best in that situation regarding producing a loving outcome.
Personalism. People are more important than rules. When asked whether Christians should keep the sabbath, Jesus answered ‘the sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath’. This indicates that the rules should bend to our needs, not our needs to the rules. So, Fletcher concludes his approach is more true to the approach to ethics of Jesus than legalism is.
Positivism. Ethics must be based on faith in agape, not reason. Fletcher rejects basing ethics on reason, like natural law does. Ethics is based on faith in Jesus’ command to love your neighbour as yourself.
Relativism. Fletcher says agape ‘relativizes the absolute, it does not absolutize the relative’. This means that an action is right or wrong relative to agape. So agape is absolute in that it is applied to all situations. However, this absolute of agape is relative to the situation in that the actual moral judgement has to be figured out depending on whatever maximises agape.

The six fundamental principles

The six fundamental principles are foundational ethical views that we have to assume to be true for situation ethics to work.
Love is the only intrinsic good. Other things might be good insofar as they lead to agape, but only agape is good in itself.
Love is the ‘ruling norm’ of Christianity. This means that loving your neighbour as yourself takes precedence over all other norms (moral rules). This is following Jesus’ claim that loving your neighbour is the ‘greatest commandment’.
Love and justice are the same, for justice is just love distributed. Justice had always been a focus of traditional ethics and thought vital. Fletcher is showing how placing agape at the centre of ethics isn’t placing it over justice, because they are actually so interrelated as to be the same thing. Injustice is simply the result of not loving everyone equally.
Love is for all. We must love our neighbour, even if we don’t personally like them.
The ends justify the means, nothing else. If an action maximises agape, that justifies the action no matter what it was. The end of agape justifies the means of whatever action maximised it.
Love decides there and then. We have to decide what the loving thing would be in a situation. Sometimes this requires deciding quickly, but we have to make our decision in whatever time we have.

Fletcher applied to homosexuality

Homosexuality is same-sex attraction. Amongst humans the ethical issues raised by it are that traditionally, it has been viewed as immoral. Traditional arguments against it are that it is condemned in the bible and that sociologically it conflicts with the nuclear family.
Ultimately Fletcher would say homosexuality is good in situations where it has a loving outcome.
Fletcher begins by rejecting the traditional approaches to Christian ethics which he divides into what he claims are two extremes.
Antinomianism is the idea that there should be no rules at all. It is held by those who believe justification by faith and grace save someone regardless of their actions. So they don’t even need to follow Christian moral laws.
Fletcher rejects this as it leads to moral chaos due to no one having any shared moral standard.
For example, Fletcher stated he thought there were some good laws regarding sexual ethics that would enable a loving outcome. These are to outlaw sex below the age of consent, sex in public and sex involving violence, duress or fraud.
This implies that homosexual sex amongst consenting adults should not be outlawed.
Legalism is the traditional approach to religious ethics. It claims there is an absolutist set of moral rules which everyone must follow regardless of the situation.
Fletcher rejects this as too inflexible, for failing to take the situation into account.
Leviticus states that homosexuality should be punishable by death. Adultery (sex outside marriage) is prohibited by the 10 commandments and marriage is implied by Jesus to be be between a man and a woman.
This led Christianity to traditionally oppose homosexuality to the point of thinking it should be outlawed.
Fletcher would reject this legalist approach however.
He would not simply ignore the rules altogether, just argue that they could be broken if it had a loving outcome.
Fletcher’s working principles of ‘relativism’ and ‘pragmatism’ insist that moral rules have to be judged relative to their leading to agape in a situation.
Situationism is Fletcher’s middle ground.
It has the strength of legalism in that it provides something which is absolute for everyone to follow, but it’s not a set of rules, it is the moral principle of agape. This principle has to be worked out in the situation itself. This avoids the downside of antinomianism of having no shared moral standard, but has its strength of taking the situation into account.
Agape is unconditional selfless love of your neighbour.
So, an action is good if it maximises agape, if it has the most loving outcome possible.
This makes situation ethics consequentialist, meaning it is the consequences of an action that make it good or bad. Fletcher remarked that he intended his theory to be a religious version of utilitarianism.
The theory is relativistic in that it claims actions are right or wrong relative to their production of agape.
Fletcher’s theory thus implies that homosexuality should be legalised and accepted in society. Homosexuals were historically oppressed, forced to live inauthentic lives, often ending up in an unhappy heterosexual marriage. If discovered to be gay, they could face violence from homophobic members of the public, or incarceration.
None of that produced a loving outcome. Homosexual people in many countries today are able to live as they want to, without fear of persecution. Their lives are better. This is a more loving outcome.
Conscience – Fletcher doesn’t think conscience is a ‘noun’ – he says it is not a thing that tells you what is good or bad. It’s not an inner moral compass with a set list of rules.
Conscience is a verb – the process of figuring out what the loving thing to do is in a situation.
This means the morality of allowing homosexuality really has to be worked out in the particular situation regarding the particular people involved.
If someone is in a very homophobic society which could threaten their life if discovered, Fletcher might be in favour of not acting on homosexual impulses in that situation – for their own protection.
However, clearly the most loving long-term outcome is to reduce the homophobia in society.

Fletcher applied to polyamory

Polyamory is the practice of having multiple romantic relationships at the same time. This is different to an ‘open relationship’, where there is one ‘real’ relationship but multiple sexual partners. A polyamorous person’s multiple partners are considered to be fully romantic relationships, not merely sexual. It is also distinct from polygamy, where a person has multiple concurrent marriages. Polyamory is meant to involve complete transparency, where all parties are aware of the arrangement. It is sometimes called ‘ethical non-monogamy’.
Ultimately Fletcher would say polyamory is good in situations where it has a loving outcome.
Fletcher begins by rejecting the traditional approaches to Christian ethics which he divides into what he claims are two extremes.
Antinomianism is the idea that there should be no rules at all. It is held by those who believe justification by faith and grace save someone regardless of their actions. So they don’t even need to follow Christian moral laws.
Fletcher rejects this as it leads to moral chaos due to no one having any shared moral standard.
For example, Fletcher thought we should outlaw sex below the age of consent and sex that involved violence, duress or fraud.
The implication is that Fletcher would think polyamory should be legal if between consenting adults.
However the question of whether he would actually think it morally good or bad is another matter.
Legalism is the traditional approach to religious ethics. It claims there is an absolutist set of moral rules which everyone must follow regardless of the situation.
Fletcher rejects this as too inflexible, for failing to take the situation into account.
Adultery (sex outside marriage) is prohibited by the 10 commandments. So polyamory would be unbiblical.
St Paul said a man is to have his ‘own wife’ and a woman her ‘own husband’. Jesus says that marriage involves a man and woman becoming ‘one flesh’, which also implies polygamy is unbiblical.
This is further reason to think polyamory unbiblical by extension.
Fletcher would reject this legalist approach however.
He would not simply ignore the rules altogether, just argue that they could be broken if it had a loving outcome.
Situationism is Fletcher’s middle ground which he intends to have the strengths of each approach without any of the downsides to either approach.
It has the strength of legalism in that it provides something which is absolute for everyone to follow, but it’s not a set of rules, it is the moral principle of agape. This principle has to be worked out in the situation itself. This avoids the downside of antinomianism of having no shared moral standard, but has its strength of taking the situation into account.
Agape is unconditional selfless love of your neighbour.
So, an action is good if it maximises agape, if it has the most loving outcome possible.
This makes situation ethics consequentialist, meaning it is the consequences of an action that make it good or bad. Fletcher remarked that he intended his theory to be a religious version of utilitarianism.
The theory is relativistic in that it claims actions are right or wrong relative to their production of agape.
So Fletcher would think polyamory good in situations where it has a loving outcome and bad if in situations where it would have a more loving outcome to avoid it.
Judging polyamory on these grounds is complex because it’s quite a new thing. We don’t have long term data on whether it makes people more happy or not. We also lack data on the effect it has on children of polyamorous people.
Intuitively many find polyamory to be an unhealthy indulgence by those who just want an excuse for promiscuity.
However it should be remembered that these were the sorts of criticisms made of homosexuals too, before it became more accepted.
Nonetheless polyamory may be qualitatively different to homosexuality. So we aren’t closer to a judgement on whether it has a loving outcome.
Ultimately, Fletcher would likely approve of the transparency polyamorous people insist on. This ensures that it is only gotten into by people who think it might suit their personality or lifestyle well.
Conscience – Fletcher doesn’t think conscience is a ‘noun’ – he says it is not a thing that tells you what is good or bad. It’s not an inner moral compass with a set list of rules.
Conscience is a verb – the process of figuring out what the loving thing to do is in a situation.
This means the morality of polyamory really has to be worked out in the particular situation regarding the particular people involved.
Everyone is different. If informed and consenting adults really think that a radically different approach to relationships would be good for them, then Fletcher would likely accept their choice.
At the very least, it will be interesting to keep running the experiment. Perhaps if the data starts looking bad, then Fletcher’s theory would be in favor of warning people about that.

AO2 situation ethics content

Whether situation ethics grants the right level of autonomy

William Barclay criticises situation ethics, arguing it gives people a dangerous amount of autonomy because people are not saints.
Mankind has not yet come of age and still needs the protection of strict laws.
If granted freedom to do what they want they won’t choose the loving thing, they will choose the selfish or cruel thing to do.
Barclay is making the classic argument that power corrupts.

Application of issue to homosexuality

Barclay was concerned about the issue of legalising sexual behaviour that was previously prohibited. He pointed out that arguably what the law permits, it approves.
Conservatives are concerned about the abandonment of the traditional nuclear family structure, which they argue forms the foundation of society. They see diversions from this as simply people lacking discipline and chasing short-term pleasure, which then overall threatens social stability.
Homosexuality is regarded by traditionalists as a lifestyle choice which is about pleasure-seeking. They point to the greater rates of promiscuity amongst homosexuals as evidence for their view.
So, we cannot trust people to do the loving thing.

Application of issue to polyamory

Barclay was concerned about the issue of legalising sexual behaviour that was previously prohibited. He pointed out that arguably what the law permits, it approves.
Conservatives are concerned about the abandonment of the traditional nuclear family structure, which they argue forms the foundation of society. They see diversions from this as simply people lacking discipline and chasing short-term pleasure, which then overall threatens social stability.
People might choose polyamory due to being misguided by their selfish short-term desires for promiscuity. They might then end up with feelings of sexual jealousy and in an unhappy relationship.
So, we cannot trust people to choose the loving thing.

Counter

J. A. T. Robinson defends situation ethics, claiming that humanity has ‘come of age’ (influenced by Bonhoeffer concept of the ‘world come of age’). This means that humanity has become more mature since medieval times.
In the past, people were less educated and self-controlling. They needed fixed, clear rules to follow.
However, now people are more civilised and can be trusted to think for themselves more.
Giving them more autonomy (a person’s ability to act on his or her own values and interests) will increase love without risking stability of society.

Evaluation

Robinson’s defence is unsuccessful against Barclay, because there is much evidence in human culture about the corrupting influence of power.
People are more civilised, but only because of the careful system of law built around them to make being civilised their best interest.
When we take away laws, people behave terribly. This can be seen during failed states when governments collapse, or when police go on strike as seen in Canada in 1969.
Zimbardo’s stanford prison experiment also shows how power can corrupt people.
‘The lord of the flies’ is literature which powerfully represents the decline in civilised behaviour once laws are taken away.
So, without external supervision of legalistic morality, humans become corrupt.
Fletcher’s theory would lead to antinomianism if implemented because it is too individualistic and subjective.
This isn’t to say that the conservative view on homosexuality or polyamory is correct. Just that Fletcher’s theory is not the right basis on which to justify breaking with the conservative approach. Society needs a balance between autonomy and law and Fletcher leans too far on the autonomy side.

Fletcher vs sola scriptura

Traditional Christians – like those who adhere to Martin Luther’s concept of sola scriptura – would argue that Fletcher’s theory is not genuine Christian ethics, because Fletcher has ignored most of the commands in the Bible, focusing only on Agape.
The Bible is full of other commands – e.g. God says ‘thou shalt not kill’, so Euthanasia would be wrong – God also said thou shalt not commit adultery.
Yet, Fletcher says killing or adultery are both fine in situations where they have a loving outcome.
So, Fletcher fails because he claims to be Christian yet does not follow the Bible.

Application of issue to homosexuality

The Bible is clearly against homosexuality.
Leviticus states that homosexuality should be punishable by death. Adultery (sex outside marriage) is prohibited by the 10 commandments and marriage is implied by Jesus to be be between a man and a woman.
Christians who take an objective view of inspiration would reject Fletcher as failing to fulfil Christian ethics.

Application of issue to polyamory

Adultery (sex outside marriage) is prohibited by the 10 commandments. So polyamory would be unbiblical.
St Paul said a man is to have his ‘own wife’ and a woman her ‘own husband’. Jesus says that marriage involves a man and woman becoming ‘one flesh’, which also implies polygamy is unbiblical.
This is further reason to think polyamory unbiblical by extension.

Counter

Fletcher would defend himself with what he sees as a strength of his ethics, which is his liberal view of biblical inspiration.
Taking the bible literally is unscientific and Fletcher rightly points out that no one manages to live like a literalist.
However if we interpret the bible, we can’t tell whose interpretation is right.
So, Fletcher’s approach is to follow the bible’s foundational theme, which is love.

Evaluation

Fletcher’s defence is unsuccessful because the liberal approach to the bible is no better off than the approach of trying to interpret it. The themes and paradigms of the bible are also a matter of subjective interpretation.
Fletcher has not solved the problem of how to interpret the Bible, he has merely kicked the can down the road.
Situation ethics therefore fails to provide a convincing approach to Christian ethics and ends up sliding into antinomianism due to being subjective.

Whether situation ethics truly represents the ethics of Jesus

Richard Mouw points out that it makes no sense to reduce Christian ethics to only one of Jesus’ commands when Jesus made other commands too. It makes no logical sense to follow some of Jesus’ commands but not all of them. We either regard him as a source of moral authority or we don’t.
Pope Pius XII criticised situation ethics on similar grounds, pointing out that Christ himself frequently spoke of the importance of following all the commandments. (Matthew 19:17 & John 14:15). He argued that Fletcher is therefore unwittingly attacking Christ.
Fletcher claims the ends justifies the means, but Romans 3:8 condemns consequentialism – condemning doing evil for a ‘good result’.

Application of issue to homosexuality

The bible therefore condemns judging moral actions by their consequences, which is what Fletcher attempts to do.
Pope Pius XII would argue that homosexuality cannot be judged by whether allowing it would seem to be a loving thing.
The natural law view would be that homosexuality disorders a person’s alignment with their telos of following God’s morality.
It claims the only logical approach to Christian ethics is to follow all of it, the natural and the divine law.
Fletcher allowing homosexuality on occasion is just illogically cherry picking from Christian ethics.

Application of issue to polyamory

The bible therefore condemns judging moral actions by their consequences, which is what Fletcher attempts to do.
Pope Pius XII would argue that polyamory cannot be judged by whether allowing it would seem to be a loving thing.
The natural law view would be that polyamory disorders a person’s alignment with their telos of following God’s morality.
It claims the only logical approach to Christian ethics is to follow all of it, the natural and the divine law.
Fletcher allowing homosexuality on occasion is just illogically cherry picking from Christian ethics.

Counter

Fletcher defends his theory arguing that it fits with the approach to ethics taken by Jesus. Jesus overturned rules (like that of Moses’ eye for an eye & life for a life), allowed the breaking of rules (like working on the sabbath) and said that the greatest commandment was to love your neighbours as yourself.
If one command is greater than another, then it seems like that means it takes priority and thus the lesser rule should be broken if it’s the loving thing to do. Fletcher’s situation ethics is a reasonable interpretation of what Jesus said. It’s hard to see what Jesus could have meant by agape being the greatest commandment except that it was greater than the others which seem to imply taking precedence over them.

Evaluation

However, Fletcher’s defence is unsuccessful because, why would Jesus have bothered to make any other commandments if agape is the only one that ultimately mattered? If a commandment is only to be followed when it accords with agape, and should be ignored if it conflicts with agape, then agape is the only commandment you actually need.
Mouw and Pius XII’s view of Jesus’ teachings is more coherent.
It seems more logical to think that by calling it the ‘greatest’ commandment Jesus meant something else, such as only that it was the one which would be relevant to the most number of situations.
So, Fletcher has not justified the view that Jesus would have supported situation ethics had he lived today.