JLNobody wrote:Hi, Joe. In situation ethics, you and I may interpret a socially endorsed moral standard differently in dealing with a particular situation or we may select and apply different standards. Our difference in these cases reflects that fact that standards are general but situations are particular. As such, individuals may make an individualistic effort to tailor their own ethical responses to situations--picking from here and then from there as they see fit--or they may just mechanically pick a "commandment" without much consideration, viewing the situations to which they apply a commandment grossly.
Another characteristic of the situational ethical perspective, as I understand it, is that the individual takes responsibility for instances where his decision turns out to be injurious to others. The moralist, as I define him, merely says "It's not my fault; I applied the appropriate commandment of Moses' Decalog.
I acknowledge, of course a considerable amount of overlap between the two models. The situational ethicist probably uses (consciously or not) standards derived from his culture's (or other societies, if he is very cosmopolitana) moral code(s), but he does so in the process of conscientiously tailoring his actions to carefully evaluated situations. The moralist is more grossly and mechanically, and socially less responsibly, oriented in this regard. And, of course, it is a matter of degree, not just type. The distinction between situational ethics and morality are abstract notions to think with more than they are descriptions of distinct kinds of "things" in the world.
Well, I don't understand this either. Perhaps it's merely some terminological confusion. "Ethics," as I understand the term, concerns actions that are either praiseworthy or blameworthy according to a system of morality. In other words, ethics is "applied morality." Thus, all ethics are, by definition, "situational" ethics.
Consequently, I don't quite know what you mean by opposing "situational ethics" to "moral codes." All ethics are dictated by moral codes. For instance, suppose you hold a moral principle that lying is wrong. Now, a situation might occur where you are asked by a murderer, intent on killing your friend, to disclose your friend's location. In that situation, would it be right to lie to the murderer in order to protect your friend? If your "situational ethics" permits you to lie in that circumstance, then either there is something in your moral code that holds that lies in that kind of situation are morally praiseworthy (or at least not blameworthy), or else there is some other standard by which you judge the rightness or wrongness of your actions (in which case, I would argue, you are not dealing with "ethics" at all).
Likewise, if the "moralist" acts and then says of the consequences "not my fault, I followed the Ten Commandments," then that simply means that the moralist's actions are justified according to how closely they conform to the Mosaic law, and that consequences are immaterial. That may not be an admirable system of morality, but it is a system of morality nonetheless, and it differs little from any kind of "situational ethics" that is itself informed by a system of morality.
