Reclaiming Justice as Lived Praxis: A Phenomenological Critique of Social and Relational Justice in Nursing Practice

Abstract

Amid rising awareness of both overt and covert racism and the persistence of epistemic injustice within healthcare systems, there is an urgent need to revisit foundational ethical concepts in nursing. This article offers a critical and respectful engagement with Megan-Jane Johnstone's (2011) conceptualisation of justice as a basic human need grounded in a distributive framework. While her work significantly advanced justice as a moral imperative in nursing, it reflects an individualistic and deontological orientation that can insufficiently address the relational, embodied, and structural dimensions of injustice experienced by racialised patients and practitioners. Drawing on contemporary phenomenological philosophy, relational ethics, and post-pandemic scholarship, I advance an alternative view of justice as a dynamic, intersubjective, and contextually situated practice. Engaging with thinkers such as Merleau-Ponty, Carel, Fricker, and proponents of Ubuntu ethics, this article argues for a shift from distributive to relational justice, one that centres mutual recognition, epistemic humility, and ethical responsiveness. Such a reconceptualisation offers a more inclusive and situated ethical framework, capable of responding to the moral complexities and inequities shaping contemporary nursing practice.