Alasdair Maclntyre and the Professional Practice of Nursing
ciated disciplinary functions embody the moral tradi-
tion of nursing. This may be true, but I suspect that a
more thorough review of nursing will be required to
substantiate or refute this view. It is my contention that
such an enterprise will offer a fruitful and illuminating
process supporting both MacIntyre’s general thesis
regarding the virtues and provide a structure for the
identification of the virtues necessary for the profes-
sional practice of nursing.
There are, of course, a number of problems to
outline at this point. The first is that any acceptance
of the value of the current project in the terms in
which it is explained is, at least in part, an acceptance
of MacIntyre’s general thesis.
MacIntyre’s work is perceived to be conservative,
indeed Edgar (1993) argues that the nursing tradition
has tended to implicate the virtues as maintaining
nursing as a subordinate activity. A second problem is
that MacIntyre’s thesis in general as a critique of
modernity seems to exclude the possibility of virtues
in modern society, largely because his analysis leaves
little room for a given individual to be engaged in a
series of practices that make up a narrative unity.
According to MacIntyre modern society does not
provide a range of practices from which an individual
can make up a narrative unity because practices have
become marginalized by our notion of what society is,
and in some cases have become so corrupted that they
no longer meet the criteria for constructing a practice.
There is not space here to consider these objections,
merely to acknowledge their existence.
Conclusion
This paper has argued that it is appropriate for
nursing to be considered as a practice in the MacIn-
tyrean sense. It is further suggested that nursing is a
particular species of practice, that is, a professional
practice. One reason for thinking of nursing in this
way is that it provides the first in a series of steps that
might enable progress to be made in the identifica-
tion of the virtues necessary for the professional
practice of nursing. Once nursing can be established
as a professional practice, those attributes considered
desirable for nursing can be reviewed in the light of
the two other elements of MacIntyre’s triumvirate:
the element of a narrative and the element of a moral
tradition.
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© Blackwell Science Ltd 2000 Nursing Philosophy, I, pp. 26-33
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