1. Is love really the only good in and of itself
Is love really the only good in and of itself? Is there anything else intrinsically good?
Do you agree that sometimes the most moral thing to do is to break the law?

2. Fletcher on conscience And his 4 working presuppositions
Learning objective:
To understand how Fletcher used the term conscience
To reflect upon how far you agree with his understanding of conscience
To evaluate how the law of love should be applied to moral dilemmas.
Key Words

3. What is conscience?
An inner voice that just seems to know what is right? The voice of God? Reasoning ability that enables us to work out what we should do?

4. What is conscience?
Conscience describes our attempt to make proper decisions. Fletcher agrees to some extent with Aquinas that conscience is reason-making moral judgements. It is the process of decision making.

5. ‘The traditional error lies in thinking about conscience as a noun instead of a verb. This reflects the fixity and establishment-mindedness of all law ethics as contrasted to love ethics. There is no conscience; ‘conscience’ is merely a word for our attempts to make decisions creatively, constructively, fittingly.’
Joseph Fletcher
Recip read quote.
Clarify
Any words or phrases that you don’t understand.
Summarise
What you think the quote means.
Question
What questions do you have about this quote? Do you agree?

6. His interest is in our reasoning for future actions.
Conscience is a verb so it just means our performing an act in a certain way.
We should act ‘conscientiously’ therefore
His use of the word conscience is quite different to how most people use it
Because it is not a noun we can’t say that someone has a ‘bad conscience’ for example
How far do you agree with Fletcher’s understanding of the term conscience?

7. Fletcher’s four working presuppositions
How should the law of love be applied?
Fletcher gives 4 examples to try and reveal how to apply a situationist approach to a moral dilemma.
Read the 4 cases. For each…
Decide the issue Fletcher is identifying
What do you think the right response would be?
What would the role of agape love be? What would the most prominent features of the 10 key propositions be for these examples?

8. Homework
How far do you agree that human beings need legalistic ethics to guide their behaviour?