The exam board may want you show how SE works in practice. So this handout lists some of the specific examples mentioned by Fletcher in Situation Ethics: The New Morality, together with some advice as to how they might be used in your examination answers. Each example is accompanied by a mention of the relevant presumption(s) or fundamental principle(s).
THE FOUR EXAMPLES DESCRIBED AT THE END OF THE BOOK ARE NOT DISCUSSED HERE AS THEY ARE INTENDED TO BE REFLECTED ON BY THE READER AND SO FLETCHER DOES NOT PROVIDE ANY SPECIFIC GUIDANCE ABOUT THEM (WITH THE EXCEPTION OF THE BOMBING MISSIONS AGAINST HIROSHIMA AND NAGASAKI WHICH HE DOES DISCUSS EARLIER IN THE BOOK – SEE BELOW).
“A woman in Arizona, having taken thalidomide, feared that her baby would be born with severe disabilities. So her husband took her to Sweden, where, as ‘love has more control of law”. This shows Fletcher’s opposition to legalism, which he thinks can be too inflexible. The fact that love trumps law here illustrates two of the six fundamental principles: Love only is always good, Love is the only norm.
In Fletcher’s example of a mentally ill girl, raped and made pregnant by a fellow patient in a mental institution, a moral legalist would resist abortion on the grounds that killing is absolutely wrong. The situationist, applying the law of love, would support abortion, even if there was no risk to her life, for the sake of her physical and mental health, and because ‘no unwanted and unintended baby should ever be born.’ Abortion was illegal in the USA at the time Fletcher was writing. This again shows Fletcher’s opposition to rigid legalism and illustrates the first two of the Six Fundamental Principles. But notice that last sentence. Fletcher states that love is the only ‘objective principle’ in his ethical system. But in writing ‘no unwanted and unintended baby should ever be born,’ has he just introduced another one? So you could use this example to criticise Fletcher: all he has done is to replace one example of a legalistic rule that he happens to disagree with, with another.
“A Mrs. X was convicted (later cleared in appellate court) of impairing the morals of her minor daughter. She had tried to teach the child chastity but at thirteen the girl bore the first of three unwanted, neglected babies. Her mother then had said, “If you persist in acting this way, at least be sure the boy wears something!” On this evidence she was convicted and sentenced. The combined forces of “secular” law and legalistic puritanism had tried to prevent loving help to the girl, her bastardvictims, and the social agencies trying to help her. Situation ethics would have praised that woman; it would not have pilloried her.” The law in the USA at the time Fletcher was writing outlawed the mother’s behaviour – again this shows Fletcher’s opposition to rigid, legal rules. It could also help to illustrate the presumptions of Pragmatism and Relativism : in this very specific situation, Mrs X’s advice would probably have worked.
“When Kant, the grandfather of modern ethical absolutisers, wrote his essay On a Supposed Right to Tell Lies from Benevolent Motives, he made it quite clear that in his ethics a lie to a would-be murderer, to save his victims’ life would be wrong. The situationist prefers the ethics of the civil law, in which the failure to tell the necessary lie might very well make one an accessory before the fact of the murder.” Note that the law is being followed here. Legalism is sometimes correct. This example can again be used to show that SE is not itself antinomian, and to illustrate the presumptions of pragmatism and relativism.
What is right in one case, e.g., lending cash to a father who needs it for his hungry family, may be wrong in another case, e.g., lending cash to a father with hungry children when he is known to be a compulsive gambler or alcoholic. This illustrates the fundamental principle ‘Love decides there and then’, pragmatism and relativism.
A resident physician on emergency, deciding whether to give the hospital’s last unit of blood plasma to a young mother of three or to an old skid row drunk, may suppose he is being forced to make a tragic choice between “disinterested” love and justice…[but] Love must make estimates ;it is preferential. To prefer the mother in that situation is the most loving decision. And therefore it is the most just decision too. This illustrates the principle Love and justice are the same and is an example of an outcome of an agapeic calculus
Jesus breaks the laws of ‘Sabbath observance’ and did ‘forbidden work’ on it. So even the 10 commandments can be broken (any or all of them) if it is the most loving thing to do in a given situation. This is anti-legalistic and shows that love only is always good and that love is the only norm.
President Truman’s decision to drop ‘A’ bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki – Fletcher implies that this would have been justifiable as the outcome of an agapeic calculus, Love justifies its means.
Martin Luther King’s opposition to laws about racial segregation – anti-legalistic.
The French resistance resorting to murder, lies theft in their struggle against the Nazis in WW2 – love justifies its means.
Depending on the situation, a single woman, unable or unwilling to marry, could be justified in choosing to become a single parent, by natural means or artificial insemination. Relativism.
A priest learns at confession that an innocent man is to die for another’s crime. The priest can say nothing because of his vow of secrecy that takes precedence over the life of the innocent man on death row. Fletcher disapproves. Love only is always good, love is the only norm, anti-legalistic.
‘If people do not believe it is wrong to have sex relations outside marriage it isn’t, unless they hurt themselves, their partners or others.’ Is Fletcher going too far here?
A young unmarried couple might decide, if they make their decisions Christianly, to have intercourse (e.g., by getting pregnant to force a selfish parent to relent his overbearing resistance to their marriage). But as Christians they would never merely say, “It’s all right if we like each other!” Loving concern can make it all right, but mere liking cannot. Love is not liking.
Note: for Personalism, I would use an example from animal rights: if only people matter, animals don’t. So there can be no opposition to animal cruelty. Also, if there was a fire in the Louvre caused by a terrorist member of ISIS, and the choice was to save the terrorist or the painting of the Mona Lisa, SE demands that one should save the terrorist. I’m not sure everyone would agree with that.