Fletcher’s Situation Ethics for Societal Moral Order

Abstract

Situation ethics is aimed at regulating human actions and values based on the prevailing and forcible circumstances that may determine what should be valued as morals, Such “ethics of living” is necessary for the sake of the common or greater good. In most cases, the situations determine the survival of a greater number of persons, irrespective of the nature of causality that may be impeded. With situation ethics, Fletcher advocates that a human person is an agent of a conscious being. These human actions in society cannot be free from moral implications when the sense of common goodness prevails. Adopting expository and descriptive methods of inquiry, the essay examines Fletcher’s situation ethics in relation to the possibilities of moral order in our world that has been bedeviled by erotic and erratic actions, ideologies, interests, and values without meaningful responsibility that can guarantee authentic and integral living. The paper highlights the moral thrusts for one’s actions and choices not to be judged or evaluated at face value, but to consider the possible rationality based on the situations in which actions are expressed and choices are made. The objective of the paper is hinged on the indispensability of one’s situation as a conscientious determinant of one’s moral responsibility and interest. The paper concludes that Fletcher’s situation ethics will remain ever relevant in the face of other ethical theories, principles, movementsor ideologies, as it can lead the human persons and their world to an enduring possibility of peace and tranquility, and then, guarantees the sustainability of moral order when the principle of love and care is generally adopted to regulate the contents of human freedom and conscience.