The view of person as caring and complete is also intentional; it offers a lens for a way of being with another that prevents the segmenting of that other into component parts (e.g., mind, body, spirit). Here, valuing and respecting each person's beauty, worth, and uniqueness is lived as one seeks to understand fully the meaning of values, choices, and priority systems through which values are expressed. The inherent value that persons reflect and to which they respond is the wholeness of persons. The person is at all times whole. The idea of wholeness does not negate an appreciation of the complexity of being. However, from the perspective of the theory Nursing as Caring, to encounter person as less than whole involves a failure to encounter person. Un-il our view is such that it includes the whole as complete person and not just a part, we can not fully know the person. Gadow's (1984) contrasting paradigms, empathic and philanthropic, are relevant to this understanding. The philanthropic paradigm enables a relationship in which dignity is bestowed as a "gift from one who is whole to one who is not" (p. 68). Philanthropy marks the person as other than one like me. Gadow's empathic paradigm, on the other hand, "breaches objectivity" (p. 67) and expresses participating in the experience of another. In the empathic paradigm, the subjectivity of the other is "assumed to be as whole and valid as that of the caregiver" (p. 68). These paradigm descriptions facilitate our knowing how we are with others. Is the attitude expressed through nursing one of person as part or person as whole? How do these perspectives direct nursing practice? Our understanding of person as caring centers on valuing and celebrating human wholeness, the human person as living and growing in caring, and active personal engagement with others. This perspective of what it means to be human is the foundation for understanding nursing as a human endeavor, a person-to-person service, a human social institution, and a human science. Our view enables the development of nursing as a discipline of constant discovery and new knowing. Like disciplines, professions have unique characteristics, as defined by Flexner. Flexner (1919) initially identified as the most basic characteristic of a profession that it addresses a unique and urgent social need through techniques derived from a tested knowledge base. Professions have their historical roots in those human services that people provided for each other within existing social institutions (e.g., tribe, family, or community). Thus, each profession, including nursing, has its origins in everyday human situations and the everyday contributions people make to the welfare of others. Flexner's founding conditions for the designation profession are reiterated in the American Nursing Association's 1980 Social Policy Statement, in which the idea of a social contract is addressed.