The Puzzle of Ethics by Peter Vardy

Author:Peter Vardy [Vardy, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Reference, Philosophy, Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781315502960
Google: WYCTDAAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 30852534
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 1994-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

PART II

APPLIED ETHICS

TEN

Situation Ethics

Bishop John Robinson in Honest to God said that:

There is no one ethical system that can claim to be Christian (‘Christian Morals Today’, p. 18).

Whilst this may be true, Christianity has traditionally been dominated by natural law thinking and Situation Ethics arose out of this background. Bultmann claimed that Jesus had no ethic – by this he meant that Jesus did not put forward any form of moral theory. Situation ethics can be summed up in two quotations:

There is only one ultimate and invariable duty, and its formula is ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself’. How to do this is another question, but this is the whole of moral duty (William Temple).

The law of love is the ultimate law because it is the negation of law; it is absolute because it concerns everything concrete … The absolutism of love is its power to go into concrete situations … (Paul Tillich).

Joseph Fletcher, an Anglican theologian, developed the situation ethics approach and his book by that name was the classic treatment and was published in 1966 (by SCM Press). However, he did not pioneer the basic ideas of situation ethics, which had a longer history. This chapter draws heavily on Fletcher’s book.

At the beginning Fletcher tells the following story: A friend of his arrived at St Louis in the USA just as a presidential campaign was ending. The cab driver who drove him was clearly involved in the battle and said: ‘I and my father and grandfather before him, and their fathers, have always been straight-ticket Republicans.’ ‘Ah,’ said Fletcher’s friend, ‘I take it that you will vote Republican as well?’ ‘No,’ said the driver, ‘there are times when a man has to push his principles aside and do the right thing.’ This cabbie, Fletcher claims, is the hero of his book.

Fletcher claims that there are only three possible approaches to ethics:

1 The legalistic – i.e. ethics based on unalterable laws,

2 The antinomian – the lawless or unprincipled approach, and

3 The situational approach.

Take an example. According to Catholic moral theology, abortion is immoral and can never be permitted. However the principle of double effect means that a surgical procedure may be acceptable even if the indirect result is the death of the foetus. For instance, if a pregnant woman has cancer of the uterus and where the cancer is spreading then it is permissible for a surgeon to remove the uterus even if, as a by-product, the foetus has to die. In this case abortion if not the primary intention, but as it is an inevitable by-product of the primary objective it is permissible.

This principle becomes more difficult when different situations develop. If a pregnancy occurs in the Fallopian tube the woman will die, so Catholic moral theology allows the removal of a Fallopian tube even if the by-product is the death of the foetus. Medical technology today makes it possible to remove the foetus without damaging the Fallopian tube. This is attractive as it does not damge the child-bearing ability of the mother.

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