Situational Ethics

In the 1960s an Episcopal priest named Jospeh Fletcher tried to figure out how to sort among ethical choices. He based the concepts below on 'agape' love which is the Christian term for 'absolute, universal, unchanging and unconditional love for all people". Fletcher wanted to find a middle road when a dilemma in ethics arose so that people could come out with what I call the 'highest best'. Normally people are forced by their ethics to choose a) a legalistic aproach which is a rule is a rule, or b) anything goes but Fletcher proposed a situational approach based on 'love your neighbor as yourself'.

His four working principles are:

pragmatism: it must be practical and work relativism: consider the situation- never and always won't work positivism: a person freely chooses to believe in agape personalism-laws are for the benefit of people The 6 fundamental principles are based on the following propositions:

love is the only thing that is intrinsically good all Christian decisions should be based on love love and justice are the same thing for justice is love distributed, justice is Christian love using its head and coping with situations where distribution is called for Love wills the neighbours' good, whether we like him or not Only the final outcome justifies the means, nothing else Love's decisions are made situationally, not prescriptively. He gave 4 illustrative examples that are tough situations.

The man who can leave his family with an insurance policy if he does not take the pills which will prolong his life but take him just beyond the time when the policy has to be renewed and for which he will not quality again.

The politicians and scientists who decided about dropping the bomb on Hiroshima

The female CIA agent who finds that it is against her moral beliefs to sleep with the enemy spy but if she did she could enable the government to end a war through blackmailing the spy for information.

The female prisoner of war who knows that the only way she can be released to go back to her family is if she is pregant (and a guard is willing).

Surely, these are not tougher situations than we might face in our life situations. I wonder if this is helpful?