Caring knowledge and informed moral passion.

This article is based on an invited challenge address at the 1989 National Doctoral Forum related to future directions for substantive knowledge development. The focus is on the inclusion of caring knowledge into nursing's metaparadigm. Art and metaphor are used to make a case for caring knowledge and caring ontology as a metaphorical landscape for diverse epistemological "set pieces," all converging on a Commons Room of caring knowledge within a broader human and natural landscape. Such a framework links ontology and epistemology as both substance and form, and allows matter and spirit to be of a piece, but distinguishable; human caring knowledge then becomes Annie Dillard's "Absolute base" and "Holy the Firm."