Agape
From a Greek word meaning 'love'. In Christian terms it refers to the unconditional love that they must show their neighbours. Selfless, unconditional love for all people – type of love that God has for humans and vice-versa. For Joseph Fletcher's situation ethics, moral decisions must centre around determining the most agape loving thing to do in a situation.
Antinomian Ethics
The view that there are no moral principles or rules at all.
Between legalistic and antinomian
Enters every situation with all the rules, but is prepared to compromise the if love seems better served by doing so
Conscience
Our sense of moral right and wrong. Debates often surround the justification of conscience as a reason for moral behaviour and the difficulties in defining and relying on conscience as a justification for moral behaviour.
Fletcher, Joseph
Joseph Fletcher, American professor (1905-1991) who formalised the theory known as Situation Ethics in his book Situation Ethics: The New Morality (1966). Fletcher was a leading academic involved in topics ranging from abortion to cloning. He was ordained as an Episcopalian priest, but later identified himself as an atheist. Fletcher said that we should always use the principle of agape (selfless love) and apply it to the situation we are dealing with. He said we should always act lovingly and that no two situations are identical. His theory was both relativistic and consequentialist..
Four Working Principles
One of the two sets of guiding principles of Situation Ethics (the other being the six fundamental principles) devised by Fletcher in order to help decide what the most loving action in any given situation would be. They are personalism, positivism, pragmatism and relativism.
Homosexual relationship
A person being in a romantic and intimate (sometimes sexual) relationship with someone of the same sex.
Individualistic
Concerned with the individual.
Intrinsically good
Good in itself, without reference to the consequences.
Legalistic Ethics
An ethical system that contains rules for every situation and/or the association of doing good with simply following those rules.
Legalism
An ethical approach based on prescribed rules by which people can make every moral decision. Legalism is often linked to the idea that obedience to a code of religious law is necessary in order for a person to gain eternal life.
Positivism
The third working principle - the belief that Christians freely choose to believe that God is love.
Proportionalism
Regarding situationalism, it maintains that there are basic moral laws which are only broken in extreme circumstances.
Personalism
The fourth working principle - the ethic that demands that human beings are not treated as 'means' but are subjects. It puts the person in the centre of any moral or ethical dilemma. One of Fletcher’s four working principles: people, not laws, must be put first in any given situation, and one must aim to achieve the most loving outcome. For example, a woman stealing food to feed her starving children would be acceptable according to this principle.
Subjective
An extreme version of relativism which argues that each persons values and beliefs are relative to that person and can't be judged externally or objectively.
Teleological/Consequentialist
This means that an action is right if the ends/consequences are the most loving result
Principled relativism
No two situations are the same and the right course of action depends on the situation
Relativism
The second working principle - there are no absolute rights or wrongs, it is relative to the situation. The view that there are no universal moral norms, but that an action should be judged right or wrong depending on the social, cultural and individual circumstances in each situation; one of Fletcher’s four working principles.
John Robinson
‘The moral precepts of Jesus are not intended to be understood legalistically’ ‘Love has a built-in moral compass’
Joseph Fletcher
‘The morality of an action depends on the situation’
Six Fundamental Principles
One of the two sets of guiding principles of Situation Ethics (the other being the four working principles) devised by Fletcher in order to help decide what the most loving action in any given situation would be. These six fundamental principles are: only one thing is intrinsically good, namely love, nothing else at all; only the principle of love provides a reasonable base by which to make judgements of right and wrong; love and justice are the same, for justice is love distributed, nothing else; love wills the good of others, regardless of feelings; a loving end justifies the means; love’s decisions are made situationally, not prescriptively.