Page 287 - Nursing: The Philosophy and Science of Caring

C ar it as cu rr icu lu m a n d t ea c h i n g-l ea r n i n g
nursing as a profession lies in human relationships and caring (Caritas),
that these qualities should form the epicenter of nursing curricula,
and that all other knowledge and skills necessary for nursing practice
should take account of these qualities.
Following Palmer’s proposal of a “mythic epistemology,” it was
noted that although the objectivist biomedical sciences and evidence
are obviously necessary and beneficial features of good patient care,
they are not only insufficient but can, if universally dominant, distort
the image of healing Caritas relationships in which nursing is embed-
ded. To help make philosophical sense of this, I turned to aspects of
the work of Emmanuel Levinas and his highlighting the importance
of Caritas—love or caring for the other that goes beyond the self. For
the other, Levinas uses the image of “the face.” In using that image,
Levinas is inviting us to consider the permanent tension that arises
between a universal other and the irreducible difference of the other,
upon whom a universally applied approach can inflict harm. Levinas’s
point is that the difference of each “face” cannot be reduced to or cap-
tured in universal aspirations and approaches. In the maxim “one size
fits all—such as ‘the case,’ ” the face is not seen; it becomes invisible.
It is that which can be objectively ascertained that counts, not the face
itself, not this individual human being. In the end, Caritas Consciousness
seeks to give the person back to self, to see the face that stands before
us. In this respect a Caring Science grounded in Caritas seeks to bring
the objectivist epistemology of “the case” or the remote, detached
impersonal policy or the economic worldview back into the face.
This “bringing back” is not simply a contrived synthesis; it is a
metaphysics in the sense that it seeks not to transcend the vagaries and
constraints of actual education and practice. It is intended to estab-
lish a foundation from which the knowledge and skills of nursing can
emerge from an educational ethos deduced from the primary values
of Caritas, from a broader Caring Science context. A Caring Science is
not a unitary thing, a singular and rule-bound belief system. It engages
with the diversity of the sciences and humanities and with notions of
personal growth, of transformative learning by which the terms in
which people think and the words they speak can actually be changed
in educative situations. This takes time and trouble, or, put more

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