ABSTRACT
Chapter 2 substantively reviews previous work about the relationship between nursing and humanities. It begins with a survey of humanities in nurse education, looking at how different art forms have been employed in the classroom to promote critical thinking and empathetic imagination. The following two sections look at history and philosophy as humanities disciplines that have been embraced by nurse scholars. History is important in establishing identity and supporting choices about the future direction of the profession. Philosophy has displaced large-scale theory as the basis for addressing questions that arise from nursing practice in rigorous ways. In the final section, there is a discussion of terms that have been used to try to capture the lived experience of nursing practice, namely “art”, “aesthetics”, and “craft”. All of these terms have some merit, but also invite differing interpretations and have limitations. The conclusion is that humanities, which encompass more concrete disciplinary approaches, may be a more practical approach to addressing the need for articulating nursing life.
