The search for the good in nursing? The burden of ethical expertise

This paper examines the increasing trend by nursing scholars such as Patricia Benner to conceptualize ethics as a contextual and embodied 'way of knowing', embedded in nursing expertise. The intellectual origins of this development and its debt to neo-Aristotelian thinkers such as philosopher Charles Taylor are discussed. It will be argued that rather than revealing a truth about ethical expertise, the emergence of the 'expert' nurse as a moral and ethical category is the result of the elaboration of neo-Thomist discourses in the educational and professional shaping of nurses. These discourses act on and are enacted by the individual nurse through his or her participation in specific ethical exercises that result in the constitution of the desired subjectivity - or 'expertise'. Central to this shaping are particular notions of 'the good' and its relationship to knowledge, skill and practice. Critiques of these neo-Aristotelian perspectives are discussed and applied to the notion of moral expertise in nursing, and the claims made by its proponents concerning the 'ethical' distinction between experienced and expert nurses. Finally, a call is made for a more pluralistic approach to ethics.