EXTRACT ONE - WILLIAM BARCLAY, ‘SITUATION ETHICS’ (1971)
When we talk about ethics, we mostly mean a series of rules and laws and principles by which we act and which tell us what to
do. Mostly we take it that ethics classifies words and actions into things which are good and things which are bad, and we take it
that the goodness and the badness belong to the thing as such. On the whole this is meant to simplify things and to make life
easy. It means that we have got, so we think, a series of prefabricated rules and laws and principles, which we accept and apply.
It saves us from the difficult and the often dangerous task of making our own judgments and deciding things for ourselves.
Ethics is mostly meant as rules and principles - this is absolutist ethics, such as natural moral law or divine command ethics
Ethics categorises everything into good and bad
We see absolutist and legalist ethics as protecting us from having to make our own decisions
But in 1966 an American professor called Joseph Fletcher wrote a book called Situation Ethics, which has proved to be one of the
most influential books written this century. Fletcher’s basic principle is that there is nothing which is universally right or universally
wrong; there is nothing which is intrinsically good or intrinsically bad. Goodness and badness are not built in, essential,
unchangeable qualities of anything; they are only things which happen to actions in different situations; they are only descriptions
of things in different circumstances; they are not properties, they are predicates. According to this theory of ethics, there is no
such thing as a pre definition of goodness or badness. What we have to take to any situation is not a prefabricated decision, but
an act of judgement. Throughout this chapter the arguments and the illustrations are taken mainly from Fletcher’s two books,
Situation Ethics and Moral Responsibility.
In Fletcher’s situation ethics he argued that nothing is good in itself (absolutely good at all times) or bad in itself (absolutely bad
at all times)
Goodness and badness apply to different things in different circumstances
We must use our own judgement in each situation
Even the most evil actions could be considered good, given the right circumstance
It has to be noted that the situation ethics man does not as it were start from nothing. He knows all the rules and the principles;
he knows all that the accumulated experience of human beings has found out. He knows that there are rules and principles; but
he refuses to say that any principle is absolutely binding and always valid, right or wrong in itself. Bonhoeffer said: ‘Principles are
only tools in the hand of God, soon to be thrown away as unserviceable.’ The situationist does not deny that there are principles;
he does not for a moment deny the classifications of things that experience has built up; but he completely refuses to be shackled
or bound by anything.
Someone who adheres to situation ethics is aware of moral principles that have been established in the world, and will most
likely stick to generally accepted guidelines that everyone has decided and agreed on together, such as it is wrong to murder.
Therefore, the situation ethicist never makes a decision with absolutely no guidelines
Moral rules do provide useful generalisations about right and wrong
However, these principles are not adhered to strictly, and the situation ethicist allows themselves to stray from these commonly
established norms if there feel it necessary, meaning that situation ethics is not absolutist
We have got to qualify all this; for to the situationist there is one thing and one thing only that is absolutely, always and universally
good – and that one thing is love. So Fletcher’s first two propositions are:
Only one thing is intrinsically good, namely love: nothing else. The ultimate norm of Christian decisions is love: nothing else.
Fletcher’s ethics is based off of the Christian norm of love - ‘Love thy neighbour’
Evidence in the New Testament of Jesus’ love to strangers
Quite clearly we will have to be sure of just what love is. The situationist is not talking about what we might call romantic love. In
Greek there are four words for love, there is erōs, which means passion; there is always sex in erōs. There is philia, which is
friendship-feeling; there is physical love in philia, but there is loyalty and companionship as well. There is storgē, which is love in
the family circle; there is no sex in it; it is the love of a father for a daughter, a son for his mother, a brother for a sister. And there
is agapē; this is the word. Agapē is unconquerable goodwill; it is the determination always to seek the other man’s highest good,
no matter what he does to you. Insult, injury, indifference – it does not matter; nothing but goodwill. It has been defined as
purpose, not passion. It is an attitude to the other person.
,The love that a situationist must act with is Agape, which is not romantic, friendship, or family love. Agape is a completely selfless
love, which is expressed to everyone regardless of one’s feelings or judgements towards a person
Expressing Agape means expressing love without expecting anything in return.
Agape should be expressed because it is intrinsically good (good in itself) and not for personal gain
One’s purpose is perhaps to act out of and express Agape to others
For Fletcher, an action is moral to the extent that it is done out of love for another human being
This is all important, because if we talk about this kind of love, it means that we can love the person we don’t like. This is not a
matter of the reaction of the heart; it is an attitude of the will and the whole personality deliberately directed to the other man.
You cannot order a man to fall in love in the romantic sense of the term. Falling in love is like stepping on a banana skin; it happens,
and that is all there is to it. But you can say to a man: ‘Your attitude to others must be such that you will never, never, never want
anything but their highest good.’
Agape is an attitude that everyone must accept and adhere to
Agape allows us to act morally even to the people we dislike. This prevents us from being bias or harming people we dislike b y
our decisions and actions
Obviously, when we define love like this, love is a highly intelligent thing. We must, as the Americans say, figure the angles. We
must in any situation work out what love is. What does love demand?
Suppose, for instance, a house catches fire and in it there is a baby and the original of the Mona Lisa; which do you save the baby
or the priceless and irreplaceable picture? There is really no problem here; you save the baby for a life is always of greater value
than a picture.
But think of this one – suppose in the burning house there is your aged father, an old man, with the days of his usefulness at an
end, and a doctor who has discovered a cure for one of the world’s great killer diseases, and who still carries the formulae in his
head, and you can save only one – whom do you save? Your father who is dear to you, or the doctor in whose hands there are
thousands of lives? Which is love?
One must decide which action would demonstrate Agape the best
Saving your father may be a selfish act, as it only benefits you. This is acting out of the desire for personal gain. Fletcher may also
argue that saving your father is a form of storge, which is love in the family circle and felt between parent and child.
If one were to truly show Agape, they would save the doctor. Regardless of personal feelings onwards the doctor, or the lack of
familial, romantic, or platonic attraction they feel towards them, you accept that it would be more loving to help an abundant
amount of ill people over just having a short amount of time with your father. This is showing love without accepting nothing in
return, and recognising the needs of others are more important than your own
On the Wilderness Trail, Daniel Boone’s trail westward through Cumberland Gap to Kentucky, many families in the trail caravans
lost their lives to the Indians. A Scottish woman had a baby at the breast. The baby was ill and crying, and the baby’s crying was
betraying her other three children and the rest of the party; the party clearly could not remain hidden if the baby continued
crying; their position would be given away. Well, the mother clung to the baby; the baby’s cries led the Indians to the position;
and the party was discovered and all were massacred, there was another such occasion. On this occasion there was a Negro
woman in the party. Her baby too was crying and threatening to betray the party. She strangled the baby with her own two hands
to stop its crying – and the whole party escaped. Which action was love? The action of the mother who kept her baby and brought
death to it and to herself and to all, or the action of the mother who killed the baby and saved the lives of the caravan? Here is
the kind of decision with which the situationist confronts us; which action was love?
The situationist is always confronting us with decisions. There is no absolute right and wrong; we have to work it out in each
situation. There are principles, of course, but they can only advise; they do not have the right of veto. Any principle must be
abandoned, left, disregarded, if the command to love your neighbour can be better served by so doing.
Moral principles are only guidelines. Fletcher is perhaps suggesting that it would be dangerous to adhere to them all of the time
If acting with Agape appears to go against a pre-established moral principle in a given situation, that principle should be
abandoned
, A friend of Fletcher’s arrived in St Louis just as a presidential campaign was ending. He took a cab and the cabdriver volunteered
the information: ‘I and my father and my grandfathers and their fathers have always been straight ticket Republicans.’ ‘Ah,’ said
Fletcher’s friend who is himself a Republican, ‘I take it that means you will vote for Senator So-and-so.’ ‘No,’ said the driver, ‘there
are times when a man has to push his principles aside, and do the right thing!’ There are times when principles become wrong –
even when they are right.
An example of someone judging the best course of action based on the situation instead of their preconceived principles or what
they have been taught to believe is right
The other is a story from Nash‘s play The Rainmaker. The Rainmaker makes love to a spinster girl in a barn at midnight. He does
not really love her, but he is determined to save her from becoming spinsterised; he wants to give her back her womanhood, and
to rekindle her hopes of marriage and children. Her morally outraged brother threatens to shoot him. Her father, a wise old
rancher, says to his son: ‘Noah, you’re so full of what’s right that you can’t see what’s good.’ For the situationist a thing that is
labelled wrong can be in certain circumstances the only right thing.
This leads us to the second of Fletcher’s basic principles. Fletcher lays it down:
Love and justice are the same thing, for justice is love distributed, nothing else.
We can relate love and justice in different ways. Sometimes people think of love versus justice, as if love and justice were against
each other; or love or justice, as if you had to choose one or the other, but could not have both; or love and justice as if the two
things complemented each other. But for Fletcher love is justice; love and justice are one and the same thing. This is a new idea.
Niebuhr, the great American teacher, used to say that the difference is that love is transcendent and love is impossible; while
justice is something by which we can live in this present society. Brunner held that the difference is that love must be between
two persons; whereas justice exists between groups. But Fletcher will have it that love is the same thing as justice. How does he
make this out?
The second of Fletcher’s basic principles that Barclay identifies is the idea that love and justice are fundamentally the same thing,
with Justice simply being love distributed
However, many previous philosophers through of love and justice as separate entities
- Niebuhr - love is transcendent and impossible (it is out of reach and unidentifiable) but justice is something that can be
identified and pursued in today’s society
- Brunner - love is between two people but justice exists between groups
Accept the fact that the one absolute is love. Then love has to be worked out in the situations of life – and the working of it out
is justice, Justice, it is said, consists of giving each man his due; but the one thing that is due to every man is love; therefore love
and justice are the same. Justice, says Fletcher, is love distributed. When we are confronted with the claims of more than one
person, of three or four people, we have to give them love, and it is justice which settles just how love is to be applied to each of
them. Justice is love working out its problems.
Love is the one intrinsic, absolute good, and if applied situationally, has to be worked out case to case so that the greatest amount
of love, or just the most loving action can be pursued
This forms the basis of justice
Justice involves distributing the amount of love each man deserves and needs
So then unless love is to be a vague sentimental generalised feeling, there must be justice, because justice is love applied to
particular cases. This is precisely what is so often the matter with love, the fact that it never gets worked out and never gets
beyond being a feeling and an emotion. Some time ago – Fletcher cites the case – Sammy Davis Jr. the great entertainer became
a Jew, and thereby repudiated Christianity. ‘As I see it,’ he said, ‘the difference is that the Christian religion preaches, Love thy
neighbour, and the Jewish religion preaches justice, and I think that justice is the big thing we need.’ Sammy Davis is black, and
he knew all about so-called Christian love. As Fletcher says, there are many people who would claim that they love black people,
and who at the same time deny them simple justice. Fletcher goes on: ‘To paraphrase the classic cry of protest, we can say: To
hell with your love; we want justice.’ This is exactly what happens when justice and love are not equated.
When we talk about ethics, we mostly mean a series of rules and laws and principles by which we act and which tell us what to
do. Mostly we take it that ethics classifies words and actions into things which are good and things which are bad, and we take it
that the goodness and the badness belong to the thing as such. On the whole this is meant to simplify things and to make life
easy. It means that we have got, so we think, a series of prefabricated rules and laws and principles, which we accept and apply.
It saves us from the difficult and the often dangerous task of making our own judgments and deciding things for ourselves.
Ethics is mostly meant as rules and principles - this is absolutist ethics, such as natural moral law or divine command ethics
Ethics categorises everything into good and bad
We see absolutist and legalist ethics as protecting us from having to make our own decisions
But in 1966 an American professor called Joseph Fletcher wrote a book called Situation Ethics, which has proved to be one of the
most influential books written this century. Fletcher’s basic principle is that there is nothing which is universally right or universally
wrong; there is nothing which is intrinsically good or intrinsically bad. Goodness and badness are not built in, essential,
unchangeable qualities of anything; they are only things which happen to actions in different situations; they are only descriptions
of things in different circumstances; they are not properties, they are predicates. According to this theory of ethics, there is no
such thing as a pre definition of goodness or badness. What we have to take to any situation is not a prefabricated decision, but
an act of judgement. Throughout this chapter the arguments and the illustrations are taken mainly from Fletcher’s two books,
Situation Ethics and Moral Responsibility.
In Fletcher’s situation ethics he argued that nothing is good in itself (absolutely good at all times) or bad in itself (absolutely bad
at all times)
Goodness and badness apply to different things in different circumstances
We must use our own judgement in each situation
Even the most evil actions could be considered good, given the right circumstance
It has to be noted that the situation ethics man does not as it were start from nothing. He knows all the rules and the principles;
he knows all that the accumulated experience of human beings has found out. He knows that there are rules and principles; but
he refuses to say that any principle is absolutely binding and always valid, right or wrong in itself. Bonhoeffer said: ‘Principles are
only tools in the hand of God, soon to be thrown away as unserviceable.’ The situationist does not deny that there are principles;
he does not for a moment deny the classifications of things that experience has built up; but he completely refuses to be shackled
or bound by anything.
Someone who adheres to situation ethics is aware of moral principles that have been established in the world, and will most
likely stick to generally accepted guidelines that everyone has decided and agreed on together, such as it is wrong to murder.
Therefore, the situation ethicist never makes a decision with absolutely no guidelines
Moral rules do provide useful generalisations about right and wrong
However, these principles are not adhered to strictly, and the situation ethicist allows themselves to stray from these commonly
established norms if there feel it necessary, meaning that situation ethics is not absolutist
We have got to qualify all this; for to the situationist there is one thing and one thing only that is absolutely, always and universally
good – and that one thing is love. So Fletcher’s first two propositions are:
Only one thing is intrinsically good, namely love: nothing else. The ultimate norm of Christian decisions is love: nothing else.
Fletcher’s ethics is based off of the Christian norm of love - ‘Love thy neighbour’
Evidence in the New Testament of Jesus’ love to strangers
Quite clearly we will have to be sure of just what love is. The situationist is not talking about what we might call romantic love. In
Greek there are four words for love, there is erōs, which means passion; there is always sex in erōs. There is philia, which is
friendship-feeling; there is physical love in philia, but there is loyalty and companionship as well. There is storgē, which is love in
the family circle; there is no sex in it; it is the love of a father for a daughter, a son for his mother, a brother for a sister. And there
is agapē; this is the word. Agapē is unconquerable goodwill; it is the determination always to seek the other man’s highest good,
no matter what he does to you. Insult, injury, indifference – it does not matter; nothing but goodwill. It has been defined as
purpose, not passion. It is an attitude to the other person.
,The love that a situationist must act with is Agape, which is not romantic, friendship, or family love. Agape is a completely selfless
love, which is expressed to everyone regardless of one’s feelings or judgements towards a person
Expressing Agape means expressing love without expecting anything in return.
Agape should be expressed because it is intrinsically good (good in itself) and not for personal gain
One’s purpose is perhaps to act out of and express Agape to others
For Fletcher, an action is moral to the extent that it is done out of love for another human being
This is all important, because if we talk about this kind of love, it means that we can love the person we don’t like. This is not a
matter of the reaction of the heart; it is an attitude of the will and the whole personality deliberately directed to the other man.
You cannot order a man to fall in love in the romantic sense of the term. Falling in love is like stepping on a banana skin; it happens,
and that is all there is to it. But you can say to a man: ‘Your attitude to others must be such that you will never, never, never want
anything but their highest good.’
Agape is an attitude that everyone must accept and adhere to
Agape allows us to act morally even to the people we dislike. This prevents us from being bias or harming people we dislike b y
our decisions and actions
Obviously, when we define love like this, love is a highly intelligent thing. We must, as the Americans say, figure the angles. We
must in any situation work out what love is. What does love demand?
Suppose, for instance, a house catches fire and in it there is a baby and the original of the Mona Lisa; which do you save the baby
or the priceless and irreplaceable picture? There is really no problem here; you save the baby for a life is always of greater value
than a picture.
But think of this one – suppose in the burning house there is your aged father, an old man, with the days of his usefulness at an
end, and a doctor who has discovered a cure for one of the world’s great killer diseases, and who still carries the formulae in his
head, and you can save only one – whom do you save? Your father who is dear to you, or the doctor in whose hands there are
thousands of lives? Which is love?
One must decide which action would demonstrate Agape the best
Saving your father may be a selfish act, as it only benefits you. This is acting out of the desire for personal gain. Fletcher may also
argue that saving your father is a form of storge, which is love in the family circle and felt between parent and child.
If one were to truly show Agape, they would save the doctor. Regardless of personal feelings onwards the doctor, or the lack of
familial, romantic, or platonic attraction they feel towards them, you accept that it would be more loving to help an abundant
amount of ill people over just having a short amount of time with your father. This is showing love without accepting nothing in
return, and recognising the needs of others are more important than your own
On the Wilderness Trail, Daniel Boone’s trail westward through Cumberland Gap to Kentucky, many families in the trail caravans
lost their lives to the Indians. A Scottish woman had a baby at the breast. The baby was ill and crying, and the baby’s crying was
betraying her other three children and the rest of the party; the party clearly could not remain hidden if the baby continued
crying; their position would be given away. Well, the mother clung to the baby; the baby’s cries led the Indians to the position;
and the party was discovered and all were massacred, there was another such occasion. On this occasion there was a Negro
woman in the party. Her baby too was crying and threatening to betray the party. She strangled the baby with her own two hands
to stop its crying – and the whole party escaped. Which action was love? The action of the mother who kept her baby and brought
death to it and to herself and to all, or the action of the mother who killed the baby and saved the lives of the caravan? Here is
the kind of decision with which the situationist confronts us; which action was love?
The situationist is always confronting us with decisions. There is no absolute right and wrong; we have to work it out in each
situation. There are principles, of course, but they can only advise; they do not have the right of veto. Any principle must be
abandoned, left, disregarded, if the command to love your neighbour can be better served by so doing.
Moral principles are only guidelines. Fletcher is perhaps suggesting that it would be dangerous to adhere to them all of the time
If acting with Agape appears to go against a pre-established moral principle in a given situation, that principle should be
abandoned
, A friend of Fletcher’s arrived in St Louis just as a presidential campaign was ending. He took a cab and the cabdriver volunteered
the information: ‘I and my father and my grandfathers and their fathers have always been straight ticket Republicans.’ ‘Ah,’ said
Fletcher’s friend who is himself a Republican, ‘I take it that means you will vote for Senator So-and-so.’ ‘No,’ said the driver, ‘there
are times when a man has to push his principles aside, and do the right thing!’ There are times when principles become wrong –
even when they are right.
An example of someone judging the best course of action based on the situation instead of their preconceived principles or what
they have been taught to believe is right
The other is a story from Nash‘s play The Rainmaker. The Rainmaker makes love to a spinster girl in a barn at midnight. He does
not really love her, but he is determined to save her from becoming spinsterised; he wants to give her back her womanhood, and
to rekindle her hopes of marriage and children. Her morally outraged brother threatens to shoot him. Her father, a wise old
rancher, says to his son: ‘Noah, you’re so full of what’s right that you can’t see what’s good.’ For the situationist a thing that is
labelled wrong can be in certain circumstances the only right thing.
This leads us to the second of Fletcher’s basic principles. Fletcher lays it down:
Love and justice are the same thing, for justice is love distributed, nothing else.
We can relate love and justice in different ways. Sometimes people think of love versus justice, as if love and justice were against
each other; or love or justice, as if you had to choose one or the other, but could not have both; or love and justice as if the two
things complemented each other. But for Fletcher love is justice; love and justice are one and the same thing. This is a new idea.
Niebuhr, the great American teacher, used to say that the difference is that love is transcendent and love is impossible; while
justice is something by which we can live in this present society. Brunner held that the difference is that love must be between
two persons; whereas justice exists between groups. But Fletcher will have it that love is the same thing as justice. How does he
make this out?
The second of Fletcher’s basic principles that Barclay identifies is the idea that love and justice are fundamentally the same thing,
with Justice simply being love distributed
However, many previous philosophers through of love and justice as separate entities
- Niebuhr - love is transcendent and impossible (it is out of reach and unidentifiable) but justice is something that can be
identified and pursued in today’s society
- Brunner - love is between two people but justice exists between groups
Accept the fact that the one absolute is love. Then love has to be worked out in the situations of life – and the working of it out
is justice, Justice, it is said, consists of giving each man his due; but the one thing that is due to every man is love; therefore love
and justice are the same. Justice, says Fletcher, is love distributed. When we are confronted with the claims of more than one
person, of three or four people, we have to give them love, and it is justice which settles just how love is to be applied to each of
them. Justice is love working out its problems.
Love is the one intrinsic, absolute good, and if applied situationally, has to be worked out case to case so that the greatest amount
of love, or just the most loving action can be pursued
This forms the basis of justice
Justice involves distributing the amount of love each man deserves and needs
So then unless love is to be a vague sentimental generalised feeling, there must be justice, because justice is love applied to
particular cases. This is precisely what is so often the matter with love, the fact that it never gets worked out and never gets
beyond being a feeling and an emotion. Some time ago – Fletcher cites the case – Sammy Davis Jr. the great entertainer became
a Jew, and thereby repudiated Christianity. ‘As I see it,’ he said, ‘the difference is that the Christian religion preaches, Love thy
neighbour, and the Jewish religion preaches justice, and I think that justice is the big thing we need.’ Sammy Davis is black, and
he knew all about so-called Christian love. As Fletcher says, there are many people who would claim that they love black people,
and who at the same time deny them simple justice. Fletcher goes on: ‘To paraphrase the classic cry of protest, we can say: To
hell with your love; we want justice.’ This is exactly what happens when justice and love are not equated.
