Can Justice Coexist with the Supremacy of Personal Values in Nursing Practice?

This article explores a relationship between justice and personal values, typically understood as illustrative of universalist and particularist accounts of morality, and therefore, as oppositional. The possibility of the coexistence of personal values and justice depends on the conceptualization of justice and the nature of the personal values. In contrast to traditional conceptions, the author presents an alternative and feminist view of justice in which the universalist and particularist accounts of morality need not conflict. The author argues that personal values that work in such a way so as to include previously marginalized others in the group of those who have access to the goods of social life are the personal values that are compatible with justice. In conclusion, the author focuses on the implications for the care/justice debate, the necessity of political participation, and the importance of educating for justice.