Situation Ethics and Environmental Ethics

A form of Christian ethics
1. Agape love is of central importance
2. An anthropocentric and instrumental approach
Fletcher
1. One of Fletcher's four principles is personalism.
  1. 'Ethics deals with human relations. Situation ethic puts people are the centre of concern, not things. Obligation is to persons, not to things; to subjects, not objects... not principles or laws or objects or any other things.'
  2. Emphasis on the importance of people.
    1. Sees humans as the focus in ethics and as morally more significant than animals.
2. Never mentions environmental issues in his text so difficult to identify exact views.
3. Focus on loving ones neighbour (agape) could mean an ethical commitment to action when damage to the environment affects others.
  1. If we include future generations in the broad sense of the word 'neighbour' then long term issues such as climate change and nuclear pollution/waste also become situations that require action.
Criticisms
1. Too vague, how do we know what the most loving thing is?
  1. Who do we take into account, do other sentient creatures count?
2. Pragmatism and personalism place humanity and its needs first, pushing the intrinsic value of the environment to the back of the mind.

Resource summary

	Created by Carys Wilkinson almost 8 years ago