Situation Ethics

In 1960, American professor Joseph Fletcher founded the theory of Situation Ethics. Fletcher believed there were only three approaches to ethics, the legalistic, the antinomian and the situation approach. The legalistic approach is based on unalterable laws such as the ten commandments and the antinomian approach goes against this, it is an unprincipled approach that does not use any rules and is spontaneous. The last approach is the situational approach, where "the morality of an action depends on a situation". This is a teleological view, because it focuses on the consequences and therefore the situation in which the action is performed. For a situationist, the morality of a decision is based on what best serves love for example they would not say "giving to charity is good", but rather "giving to charity is good because it brings love". The key message of situational ethics is that morality comes from the love derived in the action.

Situationist’s View

The death penalty would not be moral for a situationist because there is no love derived from it. The situationist wishes to achieve agape, or universal love and the death penalty does not achieve this, however it could be argued that the potential victims or the criminal, who haven't been killed yet , will go onto to live loving lives, but the counter argument to this point is that this may have happened in the criminals case or the hypothetical victims may spread less love than the criminal themselves, making the situationists decision based on universal love alone, not to sentence the death penalty. This ethical view always takes into account the situation in which the action is performed meaning that the opinion of a situationist would vary from case to case leaving an indefinite answer to the morality of the death penalty through situation ethics. However, generally the view of a situationist wold be that the most love would be derived from the action of sentencing the death penalty, because it prevents anymore hypothetical crimes from being committed by that criminal, and these crimes could have caused a lot of pain and suffering, the opposite of the situationist's aim. Overall, situation ethics believes that the death penalty is moral and ethical.