Fletcher claims that situationism “relativizes the absolute, it does not absolutise the relative”(45). It is true that Fletcher makes good or evil actions (means) relative, yet he seems at one point to absolutise the good or evil of ends (123). If his relativism were taken seriously, might not the goodness or evilness of the end also depend upon the situation? In which case one cannot know what is a good or evil end purpose outside of particular situations. Fletcher comments on this problem when he says that “Not only means but ends too are relative , only extrinsically justifiable . . . . We cannot say anything we do is good, only that it is a means to an end”(129). Ends and means are both relative in that they are
“related to each other in a contributory hierarchy” (129) and all ends are means to some higher end. Love is the “only one end, one goal, one purpose which is not relative and contingent, always an end in itself”(129). Everything else is relative. Even Fletcher‘s (1967a) own analyses and conclusions on various moral problems are acknowledged to be relative (8). Situationists are free to make their own conclusions because “the openness and non-legalistic strategy of situationism allows for differences of judgment” (8).