Situation Ethics and Utilitarianism

1422 Words6 Pages
How can situation ethics be regarded as a useful ethical theory? Situational ethics are a Christian theory, the fundamental principal is that love overrides all other moral rules. Love in this sense is the Christian view of love, not selfish, individual love, but the wider concept of 'agape' unconditional love for all. IF all ethics can be overridden by Love, then, there are no rules, there can be no rules. Everything can be overridden by Love/Agape, it can be used as an excuse to justify any action. All ethics are judgments on behaviours, intentions and consequences. Situational ethics is about consequences, outcomes, however if love overrides all of the rules, then the only judgement that should be made is whether the outcome is one done with love. It is people who decide on the rules, making the moral judgement, deciding on what LOVE/AGAPE means in real situations. People who are trying to apply this broad, deep, Christian version of the word love/agape. People are flawed, jealous, greedy, have agendas, if all rules can be overridden by giving the excuse that it is done with love, then what is the point of making ethical judgements at all? If you look at case studies and apply a couple of different ethical theories to them as well as analyzing them from a situation ethic's perspective you will see the benefit of it as a theory as it basically states that 'All moral decisions are hypothetical, the only decision is to decide what the most loving thing to do is' and the end always justifies the means. Situational ethics are about real life events, they are applied to the outcomes of each real life acts and judged individually. The only moral compass, as rules can be broken and overridden, is Agape. Situation ethics was most famously championed by Joseph Fletcher (1905-1991). He believed that we should follow the rules until we need to break them for
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