This chapter explored the foundations of humanistic nursing. The discussion flowed naturally, perhaps unavoidably, into the realm of meta-nursing. "Naturally," for the humanistic nursing approach is itself an outgrowth of the critical examination of nursing as an experienced phenomenon. From this existential perspective of nursing as a living human act, the meaning of nursing is found in the act itself, in nursing's relation to its human context. Reflection on nursing as it is lived in the real world revealed its existential, nurturing, intersubjective, transactional character. The process of humanistic nursing stemming from the nurse's authentic commitment is a kind of being with and doing with. It aims at the development of human potential through inter subjectivity and responsible choosing. The actualization of humanistic nursing is dependent on the concurrent development of its practice and theoretical foundations by practicing nurses. An open framework derived from the human situation was offered to suggest possible dimensions of humanistic nursing practice that could be described and articulated into a body of theory. Nurses who have considered this humanistic nursing approach in terms of their daily practice have felt at home in the ideas. The conceptualizations fit their personal nursing experience. If there is any strangeness in the approach, it is perhaps that it does not follow the contours of the clinical specialties to which we have grown so accustomed that they may be more ruts than roads. This is not to say that humanistic nursing is opposed to clinical specialization in nursing. In fact, clinical nursing, as it exists in any form, is its very heart and base. Humanistic nursing is not compartmentalized into clinical (or functional, or sociocultural) specialties because it applies in all clinical areas. It is, in the most basic sense, cross-clinical. This may be the great advantage of humanistic nursing. By orienting its explorations ontologically, it may foster genuine cross-clinical studies of nursing phenomena. If nurses with highly developed abilities in particular forms of nursing would struggle together in collaborative cross-clinical studies of nursing phenomena, specialization would serve to advance rather than fragment all nursing. FOOTNOTES: [1] Wilfred Desan, _The Planetary Man_, Vol. I, _A Noetic Prelude to a United World_ (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1972). p. 37. [2] Martin Buber, "Distance and Relation," trans. Ronald Gregor Smith, in _The Knowledge of Man_, ed. Maurice Friedman (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1965), p. 71. [3] R. D. Laing, _The Politics of Experience_ (New York: Ballantine Books, 1967), p. 23. [4] Buber, _The Knowledge of Man_, p. 60. {21} 3 HUMANISTIC NURSING: A LIVED DIALOGUE