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Sociologists tend to see G. H. Mead's conceptualization of self as fundamentally correct. In this paper, we develop a critique of Mead's notion of the self as constituted through social interactions. Our focus will be on Mead's categorial distinction between the socially constructed self and subjective experience, as well as on the tendency of post‐Meadian sociologists to push Mead's position in ever more radical directions. Drawing inspiration from a multifaceted understanding of selfhood that can be found in Husserlian phenomenology, we then propose that the most basic level of selfhood is anchored in irreducible subjective experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the possibility of understanding the rudimentary elements of clinical sensitivity by investigating the works of Edmund Husserl and Emmanuel Levinas on sensibility. Husserl's theory of intentionality offers significant reflections on the role of pre-reflective and affective intuition as a condition for intentionality and reflective consciousness. These early works of Husserl, in particular his works on the constitution of phenomenological time and subjective time-consciousness, prove to be an important basis for Levinas' works on an ethics of alterity and infinite responsibility for the other person. In fact, it is difficult to understand the core of Levinasian ethics, of vulnerability as proximity, of ethical sensitivity as passivity and a suffering for the suffering of another, without understanding the influence from Husserl's work. Crucially, the paper will, on the basis of Levinasian ethics, establish an understanding of sensibility as vulnerability and receptivity that is fundamental also for understanding significant intuitions in clinical nursing. Clinical sensitivity and carefulness in nursing are shaped by the concrete and also bodily expressions of vulnerabilities in a receptivity that is pre-reflective and pre-ontological. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we draw on a phenomenological-philosophical foundation to clarify the meaning of dignity as a coherent phenomenon. Consistent with an evocation of its central meanings, we then introduce and delineate seven kinds of dignity that are intertwined and interrelated. We illustrate how these kinds of dignity can provide a useful template to think about its qualities, its 'rupture' and its 'restoration' in human life, particularly in relation to health and social care contexts. We then consider the implications of these relational and experiential views for current debates about the notion of dignity: Is dignity a useless concept? Is dignity objective or subjective? What are the useful ways of characterizing different varieties of dignity? We conclude by pointing to a metaphor that may hold the sense and meaning of our deepest human dignity: The gathering of both value and vulnerability, in which human value does not depend on the eradication of human vulnerability, but occurs within its very context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whenever the name Edmund Husserl appears in the context of nursing research, what correctly comes to mind is the phenomenological approach to qualitative methodology. Husserl is not only considered the founder of phenomenology, but his broad concept development also contributed to the demise of positivism and inspired fruitful approaches to the social sciences. In this spirit of inspiration, it must be expressed that Husserl's theory of wholes and parts, and particularly his differentiation of parts into ‘pieces’ and ‘moments’, is very helpful in guiding the selection of research methods across the board in nursing science. The purpose of this paper is to highlight a frame of reference for nursing researchers to use in examining the essential nature of that which is being studied. This frame of reference is the Husserlian philosophy of ‘pieces’ and ‘moments’ in relation to the whole. ‘Pieces’ are independent parts of the whole that are subject to isolability in study, whereas ‘moments’ are nonindependent parts, which cannot be detached, presented, or studied apart from the whole. The intent is to propose this frame of reference as a philosophical base from which nursing researchers may better select among paradigms and methodological approaches in regard to the essential nature (‘pieces’ or ‘moments’) of that which they are researching. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Therapeutic touch, a healing technique based upon the laying-on of hands, has found wide acceptance in the nursing profession despite its lack of scientific plausibility. Its acceptance is indicative of a broad antiscientific trend in nursing. Adherents of this movement use the jargon of postmodern philosophy to justify their enthusiasm for a variety of mystically based techniques, citing such postmodern critics of science as Derrida and Michel Foucault as well as philosophical forerunners Heidegger and Husserl. Between 1997 and 1999, 94 articles in nursing journals referred to postmodernism, according to a database search. This paper criticizes the postmodern movement for abandoning the biological underpinnings of nursing and for misreading philosophy in the service of an antiscientific world-view. It is also suggested that nursing can retain its tradition of ‘caring’ without abandoning the scientific method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]