Wikipedia
Situational ethics, or situation ethics, takes into account the particular context of an act when evaluating it ethically, rather than judging it according to absolute moral standards. In situation ethics, within each context, it is not a universal law that is to be followed, but the law of love. A Greek word used to describe love in the Bible is " agape". Agape is the type of love that shows concern about others, caring for them as much as one cares for oneself. Agape love is conceived as having no strings attached to it and seeking nothing in return; it is a totally unconditional love. Early proponents of situational approaches to ethics included Kierkegaard, Sartre, de Beauvoir, Jaspers, and Heidegger.
Specifically Christian forms of situational ethics placing love above all particular principles or rules were proposed in the first half of the twentieth century by Rudolf Bultmann, John A. T. Robinson, and Joseph Fletcher. These theologians point specifically to agapē, or unconditional love, as the highest end. Other theologians who advocated situational ethics include Josef Fuchs, Reinhold Niebuhr, Karl Barth, Emil Brunner, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Paul Tillich. Tillich, for example, declared that "Love is the ultimate law."
Fletcher, who became prominently associated with this approach in the English-speaking world due to his book (Situation Ethics), stated that "all laws and rules and principles and ideals and norms, are only contingent, only valid if they happen to serve love" in the particular situation, and thus may be broken or ignored if another course of action would achieve a more loving outcome. Fletcher has sometimes been identified as the founder of situation ethics, but he himself refers his readers to the active debate over the theme that preceded his own work.
Usage examples of "situational ethics".
Anyhow, I know that you're not going to grow up to be the kind of person who lets herself drift into problems that are obvious to everyone else, then pleads situational ethics--meaning 'this may be wrong but it's necessary.
Thats the dilemma that Situational Ethics blundered intoif you can change them situationally, theyre not rules.
This is a finictional philosophy, requiring its adherent to endorse neither the black-and-white values that so hamper religious persons nor the embarrassing contradictions of the situational ethics that characterize both the modern atheist and those whose religion is politics.
Some sniveling worm out there who lives according to situational ethics is not going to call the police now and basically admit that he or she intended to keep the purse or wallet or both until discovering they belonged to a murdered woman, assuming that Katherine has been murdered.
His imagination did not lead him toward vigilante solutions, situational ethics, or anarchism.
A man with a passion for justice that was alien to their world of situational ethics, in which the only morals were the morals of convenience.
This is a functional philosophy, requiring its adherent to endorse neither the black-and-white values that so hamper religious persons nor the embarrassing contradictions of the situational ethics that characterize both the modern atheist and those whose religion is politics.