1.5.6: Problems with Fletcher’s Situationism

Fletcher’s Situationism is a hopelessly confused and confusing moral theory. Fletcher’s work has the annoying tendency to present trivially true claims as if they are profound philosophical insights.

At the most general level, Fletcher commits the fallacy of appealing to authority. This is simply the mistake of thinking that an argument is strengthened by saying that someone else — normally someone in “authority”, holds it.

Fletcher uses many quotations from famous theologians and mentions famous philosophers, such as Aristotle, as a substitute for argument. Unfortunately simply appealing to others is not an argument. To see how useless this approach is consider the following: “Walker’s crisps are healthy because Gary Lineker says so”.

The other concern throughout Fletcher’s work is that he is simply unclear and inaccurate, especially when dealing with the two central ideas: “love” and “situation”.

In some places he talks about love being an “attitude”. In other places he says it is what we ought to bring about as an end point. Which is it? Is it a loving “attitude” in virtue of which we act? Or is it about bringing about certain consequences?

To see why this might be problematic, consider a case where we act out of the attitude of agápē but the consequence is one of great death and destruction. Suppose we act in good “conscience” as Fletcher calls it but our act brings about horrendously dire consequences. According to Fletcher have we done right or wrong? It is not clear.

If he does say that what we did is “wrong” then fine, agápē should not be thought of as an attitude, but rather some feature of consequences. This reading is of course in line with his agápē calculus. Ok, so then imagine the devil acting out of hatred and malice but — due to his lack of knowledge — happens to bring about a vast amount of love in the world. Has the devil acted in the morally right way? If the “agápē calculus” is used then “yes”. So, according to Fletcher has the devil done the right thing? It is not clear.

Notice it is no good saying “well we cannot decide because it depends on the situation!” Because we have just given you the details of the situation. If you need more information, just make some up and then reframe the question. So what Fletcher means by “love” is not clear. Nor is what he means by “situation”.

If you were writing a book on Situationism you would expect a clear and extended discussion of these concepts. However, there is no discussion of it in his key text and this is an important omission. To see how thorny the issue actually is consider the following. A politician stands up and says “given the current situation we need to raise taxes”. Our first response is probably going to be “what situation?” The point, simply put, is that there is no obvious way of knowing what is meant by “situation”. What we will choose to consider in any situation will depend on what is motivating us, what our dispositions are, what agendas we have.

Consider a moral example. A terminally ill patient wants to die; given the situation what ought we to do? The point is what does, and does not, get considered in “the situation”, will be dependent on what we already think is important. Do we consider his religious views, the fact that he has three cats which depend on him? What about the type of illness, the type of death, who he leaves behind, the effect it might have on the judicial system, the effect on the medical profession etc.

So then, as a way of actually working out what we ought to do, Fletcher’s prescription that we should “ask what will bring about the most love in the situation” is singularly unhelpful. It seems perfectly plausible that one person might see the situation in one way and someone else see it in another, and hence we get two different claims about what we ought to do. You might think this is OK, on Fletcher’s account. But recall he rejects Antinomianism (Relativism).

It is in fact quite easy to generate lots and lots of worries about Fletcher’s account. This is because his theory is based on a very crude form of Utilitarianism. Have a look at Chapter 1.1 where we suggest some problems and simply replace “happiness” with agápē. Here is one example.

Utilitarianism is accused of being counter intuitive. If we could only save our dad or five strangers from drowning, the utilitarian would argue we should save the strangers because five lots of happiness is better than one. But is not it admirable and understandable to save a loved one over strangers?

The situationalist will have exactly the same problem. We might imagine that saving five strangers would bring about more “love” than saving your dad. In which case we ought to save the strangers over your dad. But is not it admirable and understandable to save a loved one over strangers?

You can simply repeat this substitution for most of the problems we cited regarding Utilitarianism, e.g. it being “too demanding” and hence generate a whole host of problems for Fletcher.

We leave you with the following quotation from Graham Dunstan writing in the Guardian, regarding Fletcher’s book:

It is possible, though not easy, to forgive Professor Fletcher for writing his book, for he is a generous and lovable man. It is harder to forgive the SCM Press for publishing it.