This treatise on aesthetics criticizes various psychological theories of art, offers new theories and interpretations, and draws important inferences concerning ...

"For those of us who want to know what philosophers have said about beauty and the arts, this book will be especially useful.”—The Philosophical Review At once a treatise for professionals and a guide for newcomers to the subject, ...

Written in the 1960s, TRUTH AND METHOD is Gadamer's magnum opus.

First-person accounts from practicing nurses provide students with expert role models in this authoritative yet personal text that focuses on patients' responses to stress. The breadth and value of the nursing experience is reinforced as nurses share how their caring made a critical difference for patients and their families. This text, winner of two American Journal of Nursing Book of the Year Awards in 1988, is an ideal supplement for courses in advanced medical/surgical nursing, community health nursing, and particularly for (...) nursing trends and issues courses. (shrink)

This book presents a new potential for health care in scholarship, edu cation, and practice. Does the aesthetic environment affect the qualit y of care? Can art be a significant force in healing? Celebrated contr ibutors demonstrate the deep connections between aesthetic awareness a nd caring-based practice. Music, narrative, painting, and more are fea tured as viable therapeutic modalities essential for reclaiming nursin g as a human art and science.

This article considers the foundation of nursing as a moral practice. Its basic claim is that all nursing knowledge and action reside on a moral foundation. The clinical gaze meets vulnerability in the patient’s human condition. To see a patient’s wound is to see his or her hurt and discomfort; it is a concerned observation. To see the factual and pathophysiological is at the same time to see the ethical: the moral realities of suffering, pain and discomfort. A nurse’s emotional (...) sensitivities are central to understanding a patient’s experiences of illness. Emotions reveal value and ascribe moral importance to certain situations; they are addressed centrally by vulnerability and the moral realities of illness. Hence, the essence of nursing knowledge and nursing performance cannot be understood merely as ontology (i.e. as being-with-the-other). Nursing is basically being-for-the-other; it is responsibility; it is ethics. (shrink)

This article discusses the question of whether, as is often claimed, nursing is properly described as an art. Following critical remarks on the claims of Carper, Chinn and Watson, and Johnson, the account of art provided by RG Collingwood is described, with particular reference to his influential distinction between art and craft. The question of whether nursing is best described as an art or a craft is then discussed. The conclusion is advanced that nursing cannot properly be described as an (...) art, given acceptance of Collingwood’s influential definition of art. Moreover, it is shown that, due to difficulties inherent in specifying the ‘ends’ of nursing, nursing is only problematically described as a craft. (shrink)

In these essays, Gadamer justifies the reasons for a philosophical interest in health and medicine, and a corresponding need for health practitioners to enter into a dialogue with philosophy.

This article considers the foundation of nursing as a moral practice. Its basic claim is that all nursing knowledge and action reside on a moral foundation. The clinical gaze meets vulnerability in the patient’s human condition. To see a patient’s wound is to see his or her hurt and discomfort; it is a concerned observation. To see the factual and pathophysiological is at the same time to see the ethical: the moral realities of suffering, pain and discomfort. A nurse’s emotional (...) sensitivities are central to understanding a patient’s experiences of illness. Emotions reveal value and ascribe moral importance to certain situations; they are addressed centrally by vulnerability and the moral realities of illness. Hence, the essence of nursing knowledge and nursing performance cannot be understood merely as ontology (i.e. as being-with-the-other). Nursing is basically being-for-the-other; it is responsibility; it is ethics. (shrink)

This article explores the question of whether or not the ‘art’ of nursing can properly be described as an ‘aesthetics’. The author concludes that, although much nursing literature on the subject is confused and even incoherent, there is nevertheless some justification for seeing a connection between the art of nursing and aesthetics. The philosophical writings of Martha Nussbaum and Iris Murdoch are used to support this position.