Pearson Edexcel Level 3 Advanced GCE in Religious Studies – Anthology
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simply let her love for her husband guide her when she was baking him a c ake.
Love has t o t hink, wisely, deeply, int elligent ly.
...Are we going to be driven to this c onc lusion that nothing is absolutely right and
t hat apparent ly st ill less is anyt hing absolut ely wrong, and t hat it all depends on
the situation? Is it true that goodness and badness are not qualities whic h are built
into ac tions, but things whic h happen to an ac tion within a situation, that they are
not properties but predicates?
Let us take one last example from Flet c her. He ent it les it Sac rific ial Adult ery.
As the Russian armies drove forward to meet the Americ ans and the British, a Mrs
Bergmeier, who was out foraging for food for her c hildren and herself, was picked
up. Without being able to get a word to the c hildren she was taken away to a prison
work c amp in the Ukraine. Meanwhile her husband was c aptured and ended up in a
prison camp in Wales. Ultimately the husband was released. He came bac k t o
Germany and after weeks of searc h he found the c hildren, the two youngest in a
Russian detention sc hool and the oldest hiding in a c ellar. They had no idea where
their mother was. They never stopped searc hing for her. They knew that only her
ret urn c ould ever knit that family together again after all that had happened to
them. Meanwhile away in the Ukraine a kindly c amp c ommandant told Mrs
Bergmeier that her family were together again and that they were trying to find
her. But he c ould not release her, for release was only given for t wo reasons. First ,
a prisoner was released if he or she was suffering from a disease with which the
c amp c ould not c ope, and was in that c ase moved to a Russian hospital. Sec ond, a
woman was released if she became pregnant. In that case women were returned to
Germany as being a liability and no use for work. Mrs Bergmeier thought it out, and
finally she decided to ask a friendly Volga German camp guard to make her
pregnant. He did. Her c ondit ion was medic ally verified. She was sent back to
Germany and rec eived with open arms by her family. She told them what she had
done and they thoroughly approved. In due time the baby was born. Dietric h they
called him and they loved him most of all because they felt he had done more for
them than any one of the others. And for the German guard they had nothing but a
grateful and affec tionate memory. So what? Right or wrong? Adultery or love?
Whic h?
...
What, then, are we to say to all this? The situationist c laims that nothing is
absolut ely right and nothing is absolutely wrong; it all depends on the situation.
Goodness and badness are not something intrinsic , but things that happen to
ac tions in the doing. What are we to say?
First , we c an begin wit h somet hing whic h is a c rit ic ism not so muc h of situation
ethics as it is of Fletcher’s presentation of it. The trouble is that by far the greater
number of Fletc her’s illustrations are drawn from the abnormal, the unusual and
the extraordinary. I am not very likely to be c onfronted with an Arab blood feud or
a war situation in Eastern Germany. It is muc h easier to agree that extraordinary
situations need extraordinary measures than to think that there are no laws for
ordinary everyday life.
Sec ond – and this is a muc h more serious matter – sit uation ethic s presents us
with a terrifying degree of freedom. There we are in front of our situation; we have