Situational Ethics
Karl Note: One of the
problems of the moral code suggested on this page is that it depends on ONE
single criteria for what is "moral." That criteria is "love," but
unfortunately, the word "love" has as many different meanings as there are
people using it."
A "moral code" based on
"love" would be hopelessly vague. When someone tries to illustrate how
workable it is, as click here, they offer this example:
Patriotic prostitution: a
young mother working as a spy for the US was asked to use her sexuality
to ensnare a rival spy. When she protested that she could not put her
personal integrity on the line by offering sex for hire, she was told:
"It’s like your brother risking his life and limb in the war to serve
his country. There is no other way." For the greater good of her
country, it was the loving thing to do. (source)
Right away you see that
LOVE is not the criteria being used here, but rather the concept of "greater
good." Now that is a rather useful criteria. So, the criteria of "love" is
defined as doing something "for the greater good." That is still
deficient, as you could see when you ask if ONLY the greater good of her
country counts? Would the same criteria ("greater good") apply if someone
asked the Bishop of the Catholic Church in New York to serve as a pretended
drug dealer to pretend to buy drugs for sale? Perhaps the police might say
it is "for the greater good of catching drug peddlers?" Well, YOU might see
this as a "greater good," but you can see that another might not see it that
way. So, the term "greater good" is pretty vague also.
When you get m ore
specific with a moral code you can easily run into other problems.
Even a moral code that says, "Thou
Shalt Not Kill" neglects to handle wartime when we are trying to kill the
enemy, or Capital Punishment where the law has been written to say that
certain persons may be "put to death." Capital Punishment may be viewed as
"immoral." Anyone may say that. The point I make here, only, is that "Thou
Shalt Not Kill" is a moral code that doesn't seem to fit all the likely
situations.
Likewise, a "moral code"
that says that drinking four drinks is a violation of a moral code (as well
as, possibly, being a violation of law), leaves open the +question of how
the "four" was arrived at. Would "3.9 drinks" be immoral? Could some person
drink 5 drinks and be "less drunk" than another person who drinks four
drinks? People who don't want to live by a moral code are fond of finding
the internal contradictions within moral codes that are overly explicit.
The whole subject of
"moral codes" goes out of fashion with a whole society when they appear too
vauge, or unworkable.
A moral code should not be
written in terms of absolutes, but rather in terms of a gradient scale from
good to bad -- suggesting that the higher on this scale you are, the more
moral you are. We strive for maximum morality, just as we strive for
maximum survival. We recognize we won't live forever, that we will not
survive forever, and so we can accept that we may not achieve perfect
morality. That doesn't stop us from trying -- or shouldn't!
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The situational
ethics theory was first postulated during the 1960's by Joseph
Fletcher. It was intended to be a middle ground position in
the Christian world of ethics between antinomianism and
legalism. Antinomianism says there is no law—everything is
relative to the moment and should be decided in a spontaneous
fashion with man’s will as the source of truth. Legalism has a
set of predetermined and different laws for every
decision-making situation. Fletcher’s ethical theory is based
on only one absolute law, which when applied properly, handles
every situation. Other popular situational ethicists are Emil
Brunner, Reinhold Niebuhr, and John A.T. Robinson.
Fletcher posits his
situational absolutism with its one law for everything by
saying we must enter every situation with only one moral
weapon—the law of agape love. He says:
"Only the
command to love is categorically good. We are obliged to tell
the truth, for example, only if the situation calls for it.
Act responsibly in love, and everything else without
exception, all laws and rules and principles and ideals and
norms, are only contingent, only valid if they
happen to serve love in any situation." His theory states
that "each situation is so different from every other
situation that it is questionable whether a rule which applies
to one situation can be applied to all situations like it,
since the others may not really be like it. Only the single
law of love (agape) is broad enough to be applied to
all circumstances and contexts."
According to Fletcher, Jesus
summed up the Mosaic law and the Ten Commandments in one
word—love. Therefore, there are no commandments which may not
be broken in some situation for love’s sake. Every law is
breakable by love. As Augustine put it: "Love with care and
then what you will, do." Love is the one universal law. When
all else fades, love will abide forever. According the Jesus,
love is the earmark of His disciples (John
13:35). |
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Love is an attitude, not an
attribute. The only human thing that has intrinsic value is love.
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Whatever is the loving thing to do
in any given situation is the right thing to do.
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One does not follow love for the
law’s sake; one follows the law only for love’s sake. Love and law
sometimes conflict and when they do it is the Christian’s
obligation to put love over the law.
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Love and justice are identical.
Justice means to give others their "due," and love is their due.
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Love is a multidirectional and
utilitarian principle. Calculating the remote consequences, it
strives to bring the greatest good to the greatest number of
people. Love foresees the need to use force, if necessary, to
protect the innocent; or to disobey an unjust civil law; or even
to revolt against the state, if the end consequence is for the
greater good of the majority of the people. "Only the end
justifies the means; nothing else." The loving end
justifies any means.
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Love decisions are made
situationally, not prescriptively. Love does not prescribe in
advance what specific course of actions should be taken. Love
operates apart from a pretailored, prefabricated list of moral
rules. Love functions circumstantially, it does not "make up its
mind" before it sees the facts in any given situation.
Examples Of
Application Of This Rule
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Altruistic or sacrificial
adultery: a German mother was committed to a Russian
concentration camp. Pregnant women were considered a liability and
were released. This mother found a friendly guard who sympathized
with her situation and willingly impregnated her. She was released
and returned to her home and raised the child as part of her
reunited family. Her adultery was justified since it served to
reunite her with her children and family who needed her.
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Patriotic prostitution:
a young mother working as a spy for the US was asked to use her
sexuality to ensnare a rival spy. When she protested that she
could not put her personal integrity on the line by offering sex
for hire, she was told: "It’s like your brother risking his life
and limb in the war to serve his country. There is no other way."
For the greater good of her country, it was the loving thing to
do.
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Sacrificial suicide:
Taking one’s own life is not morally wrong if it is done in love
for others. If a man has only two choices of taking an expensive
medication which will deplete his family’s finances and cause his
insurance to lapse, or else refusing the medicine and living only
3 months, it is the loving thing to do to refuse the medicine and
spare his family. And, non-theoretically, a German nun taking the
place of a Jew in the gas chambers; or a soldier taking his own
life to avoid being tortured into betraying his comrades to the
enemy.
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Acceptable abortion:
an unmarried schizophrenic patient become pregnant after being
raped. Her father petitioned for abortion but the hospital refused
because they said it was "non-therapeutic" and therefore illegal.
The father maintained that it was the loving thing to do to
prevent this child’s birth. In another real situation, a Romanian
Jewish doctor aborted 3000 babies of Jewish mothers in
concentration camps because, if pregnant, the mothers were to be
incinerated. This means that the doctor actually saved 3000 and
prevented the murder of 6000. This was the loving thing to do.
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Merciful murder: a
mother smothers her own crying baby to prevent her group from
being discovered and killed by a band of hostile Indians. A ship’s
captain orders some men thrown from an overloaded lifeboat to
prevent it from sinking and killing everyone on board , thus
killing a "few" for the "greater good" of the majority. Not
resuscitating a monstrously deformed baby when it is birthed is
the loving thing to do both for the child, for the parents, and
family.
How do you apply
situational ethics in your own life? |
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