Instant Access To 100,000+ Essays!

Situation Ethics/Proportionalism 'All you need is love' (Lennon/McCartney) Situation Ethics was developed by an Anglican theologian Joseph Fletcher ('Situation Ethics' (SCM 1966)) as a result of his critique of Legalism and Antinomianism. Legalism is the idea that there are fixed moral laws which are to be obeyed at all times. Antinomianism is the idea that there are no fixed moral principles but that one acts morally spontaneously. This latter view is most commonly associated with Gnostics and Christians who claim to be able to access a 'superconscience'. Gnostics claimed to access higher knowledge whereas Christians claim to be led into 'truth' by the Holy Spirit. Fletcher rejects Legalism because it cannot accommodate 'exceptions to the rule'. If you reject one aspect of the law you surely reject it all. He also rejects Antinomianism on the basis of existentialist ethics which argues that reality is composed of singular events and moments in time (absolute freedom). Furthermore, that there is a range of views of what should be the case in the world means one has to assume one's own presuppositions to be true before one accepts their critiques of what should be the case (or what Fletcher calls 'absolutising the general'). I