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CHAPTER 10 Kari Martinsen 153

out of the condition of our having been created. Løgstrup og sygepleien (Martinsen, 2012b) (Løgstup
Caring for the other reveals itself in human and Nursing), subsequently published in Norwegian
relationship through trust, open speech, hope (Martinsen 2012c).
and compassion. These phenomena, which Løg-
strup also calls sovereign life utterances, are Max Weber: Vocation as the Duty to Serve
“born ethical” which means that they are essen- One’s Neighbor through One’s Work
tially ethical. Trust, open speech, hope and com- Max Weber (1864 to 1920) was a German sociolo-
passion are fundamentally good in themselves gist who made a major impact on the philosophy of
without requiring our justification. If we try social science. Weber sought to understand the
to gain dominance over them, they will be meaning of human action. He was also a critic of
destroyed. Metaphysics and ethics, or rather the society he saw emerging with the advent of in-
metaphysical ethics, is practical. It is linked to dustrialization. In Weber, Martinsen found a new
questions of life in which the person is stripped alliance, in addition to Marx, in the criticism of
of omnipotence both capitalism and science. While Løgstrup was a
(Martinsen, 1993b, pp. 17-18). philosopher of religion, Weber was a sociologist of
religion. Weber also criticized the West for its
We must care for that which exists, not seek to boundless intervention and its boundless consump-
control it: “Western culture is singular in its need to tion. Science disenchants the created world precisely
understand and control. It has moved away from because it relates to what was created as objects in its
the cradle of our culture and our religion in the nar- objectification of all that exists (Martinsen, 2000b,
rative of creation from the Old Testament. In The 2001, 2002b).
Old Testament ‘guarding,’ ‘watching,’ and ‘caring’ on To a great extent, Martinsen joins Weber in her
one side, and cultivating and using on the other, explication of vocation (Martinsen, 2000b). Weber
formed a unified opposition” (Martinsen, 1996, looked to Martin Luther (1483 to 1546), who dis-
p. 79). That these are unified opposites is to say that cussed vocation in the secular sense, as follows:
they singularly and in themselves are opposites that Vocation is work in the sense of a life’s occupation
separate and are insurmountable, but when they are or a restricted field of work, in which the indi-
adjusted to one another, they enter into an opposi- vidual will endow his fellow person . . . The young
tion that unifies and creates a sound whole. To care Luther linked vocation to work, and understood it
for, guide and guard, cultivate, and make use of, as an act of neighbourly love. Vocation is under-
that is to say, cultivate and use in a caring manner stood on the basis of the notion of creation, that
as a unified opposition, means that we do not be- we are created in order to care for one another
come domineering and exploitative, but restrained through work
and considerate in our dealings with one another (Martinsen 2000b, pp. 94-95).
and with nature.
The ethical question is how a society combats suf- In other words, vocation is in the service of cre-
fering and takes care of those who need help. In a ation. With reference to the young Luther, Martinsen
nursing context, Martinsen formulates this very wrote that vocation “means that we are placed in life
question like this: “How do we as nurses take care of contexts which demand something of us. It is a chal-
the person’s eternal meaning, the individual’s unend- lenge that I, in this my vocation, meet and attend to
ing worth—independent of what the individual is my neighbour. It lies in Existence as a law of life”
capable of, can be useful for or can achieve? Can I (Martinsen, 1996, p. 91).
bear to see the other as the other, and yet not as
fundamentally different from myself?” (Martinsen, Michel Foucault: The Effect of His Method
1993b, p. 18). Intensifying Phenomenologists’
Klim, the Danish publishing house, issues works by Phenomenology
and about Løgstrup under the label The Løgstrup Phenomenologists underscore the importance of his-
Library. Here Martinsen has contributed the monograph tory for our experience. Martinsen (1975) referred to