Outline Situation Ethics
Situation ethics was founded by Joseph Fletcher, it was made to follow the basic loving rules of Christian teachings, this involves loving a person as you love yourself or how God loves you. It has traditionally been seen by Catholics as something defined by natural moral law.
Situation ethics is very flexible and focuses on agape love. It relies on showing love to everyone even those who you do not see eye to eye with. It is based around the four propositions which are pragmatism, relativism, positivism and personalism.
Pragmatism refers to the most practical method in getting a good outcome which is love, for example, if you were to see someone who you dislike being attacked in a local park at night, the most loving to do would be to help the person despite what has happened between you and them in the past. Doing the most loving this is what God would do; therefore you should do for other people.
Relativism is when there are no fixed rules that are thought to be obeyed; however no one is completely free from rules in general. All decisions should be relative to Christian love. For example if someone were to ask you where a friend of yours was because they wanted to physically hurt them, lying in that situation would more likely be the right thing to do even though it is lying and in another situation, might be classed as the wrong thing to do.
Positivism is the idea that how you act in a certain situation should be based on the chance of a successful end. For example if you wanted to go out on the weekend, but if you did your group of friends would be annoyed because you’re not spending time with them, the chances are that if you stayed with your friends then everyone would be a lot happier, so that is what you should do.
Personalism is where you put other people first in a situation, for example you treat humans as humans not as means, so a person should be nice to a person because it’s...