This paper was aimed to inquire into Ricoeur's self -hermeneutics and narrative ethics, and apply it to personal identity constituting caring and care ethics in the practice of nursing. Its purpose is to provide a philosophical foundation for caring in nursing.

According to Ricoeur's narrative identity, ontological caring was interpreted as personal identity constituting caring. His ethics were described as care ethics, which contributed to preserving and promoting the personal dignity of the client, as self in search for the good life in the nursing practice.

Narrative understanding of the client pointed to the ontological role of care in the constitution of personal identity. From an ethical aspect of the narrative, respect for personal identity and personal dignity of the client was crucial to an ethical caring attitude, promoting self-esteem in the nursing practice.

This paper suggested that Ricoeur's ethics could provide a philosophical basis for understanding ontological and ethical caring in nursing. This contributed to protection of the client from the threat of personal identity, as well as respecting their personal dignity.

The Purpose of the study was to search for the essence of HB and a caring-healing process of HB. Then the research result discusses whether the Transpersonal Caring-Healing Model has been congruent with it.

Case examples resulted from in-depth telephone counseling over a period of time at the Women's Hot Line with a client who is a housewife with HB. The counseling content was analyzed through Giorgi's method of descriptive phenomenology.

The core meaning of the essence of HB was ‘ injustice’; and essential themes were ‘ lack of reciprocity’, ‘ infidelity’ ‘ suppressed aggression and powerlessness’ and ‘ need for recognition’. The core meaning of the essence of the caring-healing process was ‘ caring-healing experience(maintaining a trust relationship)’; and essential themes were ‘ active listening’, ‘ empathy’ and ‘ forming a therapeutic relationship’. According to Watson, ‘ active listening’, ‘ empathy’ and ‘ forming a therapeutic relationship’ were identified as intentionality, intersubjectivity and transpersonal.

Transpersonal caring can release inner power and strength and help the person to gain a sense of inner harmony. Transpersonal caring is as important to healing as are conventional treatment approaches and even more powerful in the long run.

The purpose of this study was to illustrate the main stream of postmodernism which has influenced theory and research in the nursing science, and then to consider the meaning and value ofwhat the postmodern perspective has meant to nursing science in the 21st century.

Derrida and Foucaults philosophical thoughts that characterized postmodernism through the interpretation of their major literature was studied. Based on their philosophy, it was shownhow Derrida's idea could be applied in deconstructing the core paradigm in modern nursing science. In terms of Foucault's post-structuralism, reinterpretation of the nursing science in relation to power/knowledge was completed.

Postmodernism created multiple and diverse paradigms of nursing theory as well as nursing research. This was accomplished by deconstructing the modernism of nursing science which was based on the positivism and medical-cure centralism. Specifically, the post-structuralist perspective revealed issuesaround the relationship of power and knowledge, which dominated and produced modern nursing science. Contemporary nursing science accepts pluralism and needs no unitary meta-paradigm, which can reintegrate multiple and diverse paradigms.

In considering the issue of nursing science in postmodernism, it can be summarized as follows: the postmodern thinking discovers and reveals diverse and potential nursing values which were veiled by the domination of western modern nursing science. These were motivated to create nursing knowledge by conversation in interpersonal relationships, which can contribute to practical utilities for the caring-healing situation.

The purpose of the study was to interpretate Caper's view of the aesthetical approach to nursing, to discover problems of her arguments, and to ultimately expand the horizon of the aesthetical thinking of nursing.

By means of the critical interpretation of Caper's paper, problems of her arguments were discovered. This then was suggested was the proper way of the aesthetical approach to nursing.

Carper's arguments of aesthetics were seen to be confused, regarding the pattern of the nursing art and the relationship between aesthetical knowing and practical art, and to have no the nursing's perspective as moral art. The proper paradigm for the distinct thinking of the nursing aesthetics could be offered here through applying some aesthetical theories as follows; a mode of aesthetical knowing could be characterized as emphatical awareness in relationship between nurse and client, and a practical art of nursing understood as moral art in sense of the expression of the human dignity.

This study suggested fundamental theme for the proper aesthetical approach to nursing in view of the aesthetical knowing and the practical art. The horizon of the aesthetical thinking in nursing can be expended through the inquiry into aesthetical theories which offer theoretical the base for nursing as an art.