The term "knowledge economy" is, as one would expect, primarily a signal for strategists and policy-makers that it is time to take note of a fundamental shift in the role and treatment of knowledge in both the manufacturing and service sectors. The latter includes both health and education. It is important, therefore, that people begin to grasp the concept in the terms and purposes of these policymakers, and are able to reflect on its implications for nursing knowledge and practice. That is essentially the purpose of this paper. It begins with an outline of what different commentators have intended by the term "knowledge economy" and how that is held to differ in emphasis from its predecessor, an industrial economy. The paper then examines the presence of "knowledge-economics" in nursing discourse-practice. To facilitate this examination, the author uses the concept of Foucauldian ethics as a relation that one has with one's self. In the final part of the paper, the author argues that a knowledge economy requires a new kind of critical awareness in which both an ethics and aesthetics of education may play a central part. (Contains 15 notes.)