The Challenge of Situation Ethics
[Relevant for Public Ethics, Integrity and Aptitude]
The Challenge of Situation Ethics
Joseph Fletcher and Paul Tillich
Situation ethics is the kind of approach to morality we might expect from an existentialist who tends to reject the very idea of human nature or any nature or essence that is objective.
Joseph Fletcher, the former dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral, Cincinnati, and the professor of social ethics, Episcopal Theology School, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, published his classical situation ethics in 1961.
At the onset, he presents his view as the golden mean between the two reprehensible extremes of legalism and antinomianism – Antinomianism has been considered to teach that believers have a “license to sin” and that future sins don’t require repentance.
Johannes Agricola, to whom Antinomianism was first attributed, stated “If you sin, be happy, it should have no consequence.”
Unlike the latter, he assures us the situation enters into every decision-making situation armed with the ethical maxims of his community and its heritage. There is no question of throwing out all laws, rules, and commandments. However, he treats them with respect as illuminators of his problems, but he prepares to compromise them or set them aside in this situation if love seems better served by doing so.
Now that last phrase serves to characterize what makes Fletcher describe as Christian his whole approach to morality. Fletcher even takes a swipe at Kant’s legalism, which produced universal laws like a lie is always wrong. He asks, but what if you have to tell a lie to keep a promised secret? And answers, maybe you lie and if so, good for you if you follow love’s lead.
When we adopt a critical approach, we cannot but record our dissatisfaction as regards the carelessness with which Fletcher defines his position.
If Aristotle and anyone who holds some sort of natural law then it comes out as a natural corollary that morality then is to be counted among the situationists. That grouping has been emptied of almost all precise meaning. The only ones excluded from that nomenclature would be the extreme legalists and anti-Nomians.
And would they be so numerous and so influential to warrant the setting up of whole new morality?
Just about any system of the ontological ethics that is open to prudence and casuistry is already sufficient to respond to the difficulty. And when Fletcher bends something to the effect that situation ethics goes part of the way with natural law, accepting reasons as the instrument of judgment while rejecting the notion that the good is given in the nature of things objectively, one cannot help wondering whether he had really understood natural law and objective morality properly at all.
Fletcher has, to say the least, a rather legalistic definition of love. So long as an act is done selflessly without the agent seeking any clearly manifest material gain, it is a moral act.
| The four working presumptions 1. Pragmatism the action proposed must work in practice. 2. Relativism – there are no fixed rules, but all decisions must be based on agape. ‘Love relativises the absolute, it does not absolutise the relative.’ (Joseph Fletcher) 3. Positivism using the principles of Christian love, a value judgement has to be made. 4. Personalism people are the first concern, not laws. |
Even the sickest of mentally deranged acts could also be roped in as ethically laudable if they were done without any demonstrably material profit being sought in the process. But if love is selflessness, before we can access its rightness or wrongness, shouldn’t we first enquire into the nature of the self?
Besides, as one might well ask, why should love be the norm of morality and not hate? Ultimately, one can only answer that question by saying that love enhances one’s personhood, one’s human nature adequately considered. It makes one more fully human, more fully alive, and hate does not do that. This obliges us to recognise a more basic and deeper norm, love in itself, that is existential love.
To give Fletcher his due, one has to admit that he does not give the impression that he has done some critical reflection on love and its authentic meaning. Even if it would not stand up to anything like a deeper metaphysical query, he trots out some fancy terminology from Paul Tillich (a German-American existential Philosopher of 20th century) to this end.
| Situation etnics |
| Sacrificial Adultery (Mrs Bergmeir) During the Second World War, a married German woman with three children was captured by a Soviet patrol and taken to a prisoner-of-war camp in the Ukraine. Once the war ended, she learned that her family were trying to stay together and find her. According to the rules, she could only be released from the camp if she was pregnant. After considering her options, she asked a Volga German camp guard to impregnate her. She was sent back to Germany and her family welcomed her, even when she told them how she had done it. They loved the child because of what he had done for them. After the christening, they discussed the morality of the situation with their pastor. |
Using terms made popular by Tillich and others, we may say that situationalism is a method that proceeds, so to speak, from its one and only law, agape, i.e., love, to the sophia, wisdom, containing many general rules of more or less reliability, to the kairos, moment of decision, the fullness of time, in which the responsible self in the situation decides whether the sophia can serve there or not. Hence, he goes on to make a highly simplistic summary of how the rival ethicist proceeds.
Legalists make an idol of sophia, antinomians repudiate it, and situationists use it.
Finally, Fletcher, taking his cue from Socrates to the effect that the unexamined life is not worth living, suggests that unexamined ethical maxims are not worth living by, and then he unleashes a salvo on the maxim that the end does not justify the means.
On the contrary, he asks, if the end does not justify the means, what does? And he answers, obviously nothing; end justifying the means is a proposition fitting into the wider domains of situation ethics.
Obviously, the end justifies the means, nothing else. In the light of the preceding, this boils down to say that anything done out of love that is the means is thereby justified or made morally good. He is careful to quickly add, not any old end will justify any old means, only love would do the job.
And then he tops it off with another chilling remark. Being pragmatic, the situationist always asks the price and supposes that in theory and practice everything has its price. Everything please note, even for a pearl of great price, whatever it is, might be sold for love’s sakes if the situation calls for it. This kind of remark is chilling because it can be used to justify the suicide bomber who blows himself up with a host of innocent civilians and as we have soon seen Fletcher actually does that.
Even if you don’t fully endorse Fletcher and his brand of situation ethics, is there something we can learn from what he has tried to tell us? He is reminding us of a timeless and oft forgotten maxim, unless an action, however good in itself, is done with the motive of sincere love, it has no real ethical value whatsoever.
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Thought-provoking post on love and moral precepts! Your reflections on these concepts offer valuable insights and depth. Thanks for sharing such meaningful content!