[A reconsideration of nursing ethics from the perspective of téchne]

Our current age of technology sets high expectations for clarity and exactness in all professions, including nursing. This article introduces nursing ethics as a nebulous form of art (téchne) and then considers the new aspects that may be developed from nursing ethics. We first introduce the Aristotelian concept of téchne and then explain how téchne addresses experiential knowledge without claims to exactness. A discussion then follows about the relationship of téchne to rigorous and serious philosophy. While téchne is not an exact science, this concept addresses the difference between the exactness claimed by ancient Greek physical science (phúsis) and wisdom and the exactness claimed by Westerners today due to the changes in modern Western attitudes toward beings. In discussing nursing ethics as téchne, this article shows that the discussions of ethics within the medical and nursing professions nowadays are still influenced by age-of-technology claims to exactness. Finally, we propose the following: 1) nursing ethics should develop standards for ethics of care (or care ethics) wherein action is more important than theoretical argument and 2) some ideas and methods of rhetoric and narration should be integrated into the process of communication between nurses and patients.