Nursing, Feminism, & Hermeneutics

The purpose of this research is to examine hermeneutics and feminism as philosophical positions, with a view toward determining the implications for nursing science if both were adopted for or by the discipline. The plan of the research will be to review and critique the philosophical viewpoints, to compare and contrast their strengths and weaknesses, and then to discuss how and whether they might have relevance for to nursing science praxis.

Review and Critique of Hermeneutics and Feminism

Hermeneutics is the name given to social science and philosophical methodology that seeks to interpret meanings of given social and political contexts and the significance of discrete social and political phenomena and human experience more generally. Traditionally, the term has been associated with textual analysis, mainly biblical exegesis, but over time, and especially in recent years, it has been enlarged and absorbed by a whole range of disciplines in search of interpretive strategies and explanatory power consistent with the scientific method. According to Bontekoe (1996), the evolution and enlargement of hermeneutics has been largely to the good. He essentially argues that hermeneutics methodology in the modern period has enabled practitioners to engage with and bridge the gap between the content and spirit of the age on one hand and the natural sciences on the other. In other words, hermeneutics fuses methods of episte

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while few women attain the prerequisites to claim equality with men" (MacKinnon, 194, p. 354). Feminist assumptions intersect with feminist core concepts chiefly in the insight that the question and problematics of women's role in society only arise with reference to women. That is, there is a presumption of men's participation, free agency, and functionality in whatever is the mainstream culture. Typically, the idea of asking whether men should be allowed to act in this manner does not arise. The male is the standard of participation, and differences from the standard are measures of women against that standard. Increasingly, not in spite of the contemporary subculture of women's liberation but because of it, feminists question why that measure persists and whether it should. Myriad questions flow from the fundamental question about the absence of social equality for both sexes. Indeed, feminist literature questions the objectivity of much precedent scientific and social inquiry presented as objective and rational but (from the feminist standpoint) problematic because it does not acknowledge the depth of masculine bias informing it. For the reason that such inquiry is said to suffer from what have been called mythic const
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Jean Watson, Bell Curve, Hochschild Machung, Science Nurses, Denhardt Denhardt, Arendt's Habermas's, Hayman Levit, Sexual Politics, Copernicus Galileo, According Bontekoe, health care, university press, practice nursing, hayman jr levit, reich 1991, public sphere, kuhn 1962, social cultural, jr levit, shafer 1994, hayman jr, jurisprudence contemporary readings, jr levit eds, narratives hayman jr, readings narratives hayman,
Approximate Word count = 4260
Approximate Pages = 17 (250 words per page)

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