SITUATIONS ALTER CASES

˜SITUATIONS ALTER CASES

I wonder if you noticed that several times throughout the preceding section on rule-based ethics, the word ˜situation came up. As hard as I tried to avoid it, it was usually the best word to use. I tried to avoid it because its very use seems to suggest somehow that you cannot get away from the circumstances of a situation when making ethical decisions and these kinds of considerations fall into the second category of ethical thinking.

When I was a young girl, my mother used to say this to me whenever I'd implore her to let me do something that she had clearly, at least in my mind, allowed my older sister to do. ˜Situations alter cases, she'd say, comfortable in her ability to mete out fair decisions for her growing daughters.

My mother was demonstrating in her own way another basic approach to ethical decision-making: situational ethics . As the name implies, this approach allows for consideration of the special circumstances inherent in each situation, while still using fundamental principles as guidelines.

Using our example from above of conflicting rules, your company may have an open news policy and consider full disclosure of the facts to be the most ethical way to deal with media relations. From time to time, however, it may be in the best interests of one or more of the parties involved ”the community, an employee, a client ”to withhold details that could have damaging effects.

Situational ethics as a way of thinking about moral dilemmas was championed in the 1960s by an episcopal priest named Joseph Fletcher. His model is based on the notion that love is the only universal law and that decisions should be based on the circumstances of a particular situation. No fixed rule or law would supersede the assessment of the context. Whereas this is a religious-based approach to situational ethics with its reference to love, it isn't really any different from a more secular version that has been espoused through history by those who believe in the concept of moral relativism, which holds that there are no absolutes when it comes to ethics.