Joseph Fletcher was an American professor who founded the theory of situation ethics in the 1960s. He was a pioneer in bioethics and was involved in the areas of abortion, infanticide, euthanasia and cloning. He says that "the morality of an action depends on the situation". For an action to be loving is to care about one another's feelings and well being. You should do no harm to them but treat them how you would like to be treated. It is a charitable concern for your fellow human beings. Love, however, may be defined in many different ways. In Greek there are different types of love but in English there is just this one word. The Greek word agapé is more specific. it means love, not just for people you know or fancy, but for all humans and other beings of the world. Fletcher's theory is that we should express agapé love to the world. Therefore if we show love whilst choosing which action to proceed towards, then we are doing the right thing. His argument can be opposed by the following situation: An evil villain may convince themselves that killing and slaughtering a whole community is doing good to the world. This proves that Fletcher's theory can be manipulated in people's minds, after all that is exactly what Hitler did. He thought that he was killing the Jews, handicapped, gay etc. for the greater good of the world, when he was just killing many innocent lives.
If we place this theory into the concept of the ticking bomb problem, the argument could progress in either direction. We could say that we should torture the terrorist because it will save the tens of millions of people. Doing so will show love to the city and those people. They will all be saved and their city spared. However, what if we choose to show love towards the terrorist? Then what will happen to the families and population of the city? We will be showing agapé love to the perpetrator but not to the population. When considering the different options we have to think about showing the greatest amount of love to the greatest extent. Acknowledging the different corollaries, someone believing in situation ethics would most probably choose to torture the terrorist as they will be showing love to the millions of people.
If we place this theory into the concept of the ticking bomb problem, the argument could progress in either direction. We could say that we should torture the terrorist because it will save the tens of millions of people. Doing so will show love to the city and those people. They will all be saved and their city spared. However, what if we choose to show love towards the terrorist? Then what will happen to the families and population of the city? We will be showing agapé love to the perpetrator but not to the population. When considering the different options we have to think about showing the greatest amount of love to the greatest extent. Acknowledging the different corollaries, someone believing in situation ethics would most probably choose to torture the terrorist as they will be showing love to the millions of people.