THEORETICAL-METHODOLOGICAL CONTRIBUTIONS OF ERGOLOGY TO RESEARCH ON WORK IN THE NURSING AREA

ABSTRACT Objective: the present study is a theoretical reflection aiming to systematize conceptual and methodological aspects of the ergologic perspective, emphasizing contributions to studies on the work in the nursing area. Methods: study developed based on selected texts by authors that take on the ergologic perspective to examine human work, discussing theoretical or methodological aspects. Publications about the work in the nursing and health fields that resorted to ergology were also included. The study considered books, master’s dissertations, doctoral theses, and scientific papers published in indexed journals and discusses the following concepts: prescribed work and real work; work and activity; experience and established knowledge; skill’s ingredients; and three-pole dynamic device. The study shows the method used in ergology, stressing the data collection process. A reflection about the contributions of this approach to understanding the work in the nursing area was carried out based on studies addressing the work in the health and nursing areas and ergology’s concepts and method, with emphasis on the richness of this theoretical-methodological framework for the development of research on this area. Results: work in the nursing area includes a combination of knowledge and practice that goes beyond reproducing standards, routines, and procedures prescribed by institutions and the profession itself. The execution of the work activity is complex and involves the debate of standards and poses a challenge to the act of working with competence, in the dialogical impermanence between knowing how to act and being able to act. Conclusion: ergology can be a fruitful theoretical and methodological framework to better understand the complexity of the work activity in the nursing area.

Godfrey of Fontaines (c.1250–c.1306/9)

Godfrey of Fontaines studied philosophy and theology at the University of Paris and subsequently taught theology there. A theologian by profession, he developed a highly interesting philosophy, especially a metaphysics. For Godfrey, metaphysics studies being as being. Being itself is divided into cognitive being and real being, and real being is divided into being in act and being in potency. In finite beings, essence and existence are neither really distinct nor intentionally distinct; they are identical. Human reason can prove that God exists, and reach some imperfect knowledge concerning what God is, but cannot prove that the world began to be. For Godfrey, corporeal entities in this world are composed of matter and form, but heavenly bodies probably lack prime matter. On philosophical grounds, he favours the theory that there is only one substantial form in human beings – the intellective soul – but for theological reasons leaves this question open. His philosophy is somewhat more Aristotelian and less Neoplatonic than that of most of his contemporaries.

Barth and the divine perfections

Colin Gunton advanced the radical claim that Christians have univocal knowledge of God. Just this, he said in Act and Being, was the fruit of Christ's ministry and passion. Now, was Gunton right to find this teaching in Karl Barth – or at least, as an implication of Barth's celebrated rejection of ‘hellenist metaphysics’? This article aims to answer this question by examining Gunton's own claim in Act and Being, followed by a closer inspection of Barth's analysis of the doctrine of analogy in a long excursus in Church Dogmatics II/1.Contrary to some readings of Barth, I find Barth to be remarkably well-informed about the sophisticated terms of contemporary Roman Catholic debate about analogy, including the work of G. Sohngen and E. Pryzwara. Barth's central objection to the doctrine of analogy in this section appears to be the doctrine's reckless division (in Barth's eyes) of the Being of God into a ‘bare’ God, the subject of natural knowledge, and the God of the Gospel, known in Jesus Christ. But such reckless abstraction cannot be laid at the feet of Roman theologians alone! Barth extensively examines, and finds wanting, J. A. Quenstedt's doctrine of analogy, and the knowledge of God it affords, all stripped, Barth charges, of the justifying grace of Jesus Christ. From these pieces, Barth builds his own ‘doctrine of similarity’, a complex and near-baroque account, which seeks to ground knowledge of God in the living act of his revelation and redemption of sinners. All this makes one tempted to say that Gunton must be wrong in his assessment either of univocal predication or of its roots in the theology of Karl Barth.But passages from the same volume of the Church Dogmatics make one second-guess that first conclusion. When Barth turns from his methodological sections in volume II/1 to the material depiction of the divine perfections, he appears to lay aside every hesitation and speak as directly, as plainly and, it seems, as ‘univocally’ as Gunton could ever desire. Some examples from the perfection of divine righteousness point to Barth's startling use of frank and direct human terms for God's own reality and his unembarrassed use of such terms to set out the very ‘heart of God’.Yet things are never quite what they seem in Barth. A brief comparison between Gunton's univocal predication and Barth's own use of christological predication reveals some fault-lines between the two, and an explanation, based on Barth's own doctrine of justification, is offered in its place.

“Outer” and “Inner” Body in Mikhail Bakhtin’s Literary Theory

Bakhtin subordinates the experience of the body to the experience of the action, to the participation in the event of being. The world's thickening into body around the man is named as a new reality, an “aesthetic reality” by Bakhtin: “the artist and art as a whole create a completely new vision of the world, a new image of the world, a new reality of the world’s mortal flesh [реальность смертной плоти мира], unknown to any of the other clturally creative activities. [. . .] Aesthetic activity collects the world scattered in meaning and condenses it into a finished and self-contained image [образ]. This constitutes the analogy of the body and the artistic form for the creative view. The aesthetic activity gathers and thickens into a complete, sufficient- for-itself image the world dispersed from the perspective of the sense. The problem of the outer and inner body is treated in this paper in the light of Bakhtin’s philosophy of the act and being.

“Outer” and “Inner” Body in Mikhail Bakhtin’s Literary Theory

Bakhtin subordinates the experience of the body to the experience of the action, to the participation in the event of being. The world's thickening into body around the man is named as a new reality, an “aesthetic reality” by Bakhtin: “the artist and art as a whole create a completely new vision of the world, a new image of the world, a new reality of the world’s mortal flesh [реальность смертной плоти мира], unknown to any of the other clturally creative activities. [. . .] Aesthetic activity collects the world scattered in meaning and condenses it into a finished and self-contained image [образ]. This constitutes the analogy of the body and the artistic form for the creative view. The aesthetic activity gathers and thickens into a complete, sufficient- for-itself image the world dispersed from the perspective of the sense. The problem of the outer and inner body is treated in this paper in the light of Bakhtin’s philosophy of the act and being.