The Preliminary Study Of Fletcher's Situation Ethics

Fletcher was a famous American theologian and ethicist, who is regarded as the founder and the forefather of the bioethics in the 20th century. In his life, his thought had experienced two stage: a dogmatist believed Christian stage and a relativist holded the courteous manner to all genuine and fake. Situation ethics was in the transition time from the first stage to the second stage. Its production has realistic conditions which mainly display in the science,technology and society. In the 20th century science and technology improved the human condition, but simultaneously people blindly believed in science,technology and indulged in material life, which caused people' s spiritual emptiness. In the social context, from the 50's, nationai policy,transportation,immigration and so on impact the traditional Christian, which forced Christianity correspondingly to proceed reform. At the same time, the production of situation ethics also has its cultural thought origin, it is mainly inspired by the casuistry, the pragmatism ethics, Karl Barth' s the new orthodox theology ethical thought as well as Dietrich Bonhoefffer' s ethical thought.Although Fletcher thought that his situation ethics is a method, but no system, his situation ethics has a set of new morality system against traditional ethics. The core of situation ethics is situationism. This method is different from the legalism and antinomianism, which is situated between them. It is a relativism means, which doesn' t completely abandon the principle and all the time bases on the concrete behavior situation. Situation ethics has four presuppositions:Pragmatism,Relativism,Positivism and Personal ism. Therefore, in the situation ethics, its value orientation is personality, the value ponder way is pragmatism and relativism, the behavior way is morals behaviorism taken the moral choice as subject, and its theory goal is one kind of empirical ethics which is counter- priori principle, namely under the instruction of the love of God principle, people completely according to the moral situation make the moral behavior which conforms with the love. Fletcher elaborates the basic content of situation ethics separately from axiology, the theory of justice, the means and the ends, the situation and the norm and so on.Situation ethics is helpful to correct moral absolutism, moreover it has manifested human—centered moral humanism and the nature of the golden mean, and it also emphasized the value of justice. But, situation ethics has intrinsic contradictions, such as the conflict between Bible God's love and the love of God of situation ethics, the conflict between the abstract love of God and the subjective love when people make their choices, relativism(one of the prerequisites of situation ethics) isn' t throughout the full of text. Moreover it also dispelled the method moral independence, finally its relativism causes to eliminate the moral norm value. It can be said that, situation ethics holds the extremely important status in the life of Fletcher. He put humanitarianism,the love principle as well as the situationism into the bioethics, and finally he separated from Christianity. At the same time, situation ethics had played an important role in the secularization of Christian ethics and the production of bioethics.