Page 282 - Nursing: The Philosophy and Science of Caring

Carita s cur ricul um and t e achin g -le ar ni n g
of the other is marginalized because it cannot be expressed in such
a language, in the epistemic purpose/objectivist epistemology of such a
language. In other words, the irreducible difference of the other, the
face, is indeed reduced to and becomes invisible in the universality of
the care, which echoes Palmer (2004). Following Levinas, an inevitable
violence has been done, an injustice that is difficult to reconcile. In a
Caring Science model, “the case” must be cognizant of “the face,” and
it is “the face” in the first and last instances of a caring ethic and pro-
fessional practice. Likewise, the Caring Science ontology is not one
of distance and separation but one of relationship, purpose, connec-
tion, and meaning-making with the other, the personal face behind
the impersonal patient-other.
This view has obvious implications and indeed challenges for
nursing as a caring profession and for an educational ethos that would
seek to promote this ethic and worldview. It is in this respect that the
Levinasian notion of the dialectic of intimacy and separation of other
is “reconciled in the Unity of the system” (Levinas 1969:150).
As Levinas put it, “[T]he welcoming of ‘the face’ is peaceable
from the first, for it answers to the unquenchable Desire for Infinity”
(1969:150). At the same time, this separate other yet “presence of ‘the
face’ [of other] includes all the possibilities of the transcendent rela-
tionship” (1969:155). This understanding helps us make new connec-
tions between Levinas’s notion of “the face” and the transcendence of
transpersonal caring—a welcoming of “the face” in a caring moment,
connecting with the infinite field of universal Love in the moment
(Watson 1985).
With this understanding, Levinas’s views take us, in education and
practice, beyond the purely scientific model back to the face and the
inexhaustible dimensions of our shared humanity in Caritas Nursing,
in teaching and learning in a new way. In practical terms, it invites a
constant questioning and revising of educational programs, curricula,
health care policies, institutional regulations (where one size fits all),
assessment procedures, and use of “evidence.” It leads us beyond nurs-
ing as a subset of medical sciences while still being part of them and
indeed merging with them but also informing them with a deep moral
foundation for science.

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