Jane Addams

for The Deweyan Task Before Us: The New Global Paradigm for Philosophy, Education, and Democracy Emerging from the Pandemic (2021 edited volume under review) John Dewey proposed soon after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that citizens of techno-industrial nations suffer from "cultural lag" (LW 15:199-200; cf. LW 4:203-28). He had in mind a sort of moral jet lag, a condition in which most of the basic alternatives we have on hand to think and talk about moral and political (...) life, from customary moralizing to sophisticated theorizing, were developed, canned, and pickled on a shelf so long ago that they now lag far behind the multi-faceted problems that our values must speak to. The failure of many countries, most visibly the United States, to effectively navigate climate change and the Covid-19 global pandemic exemplifies our moral jet lag. Our collective responses to the new normal of global disruptions are, in William James’s words in Pragmatism, “out of plumb and out of key and out of ‘whack’” (1907, 37). The American philosophical tradition that includes James and Dewey has long sought to compensate for the excesses of America’s hyper-individualism and its anti-naturalistic distrust of experimental intelligence. In this brief analysis of our morally jet lagged response to the Covid-19 pandemic, we draw heavily on two highly articulated intellectual resources for America’s moral, political, and educational recovery: Jane Addams’s social ethics and Dewey’s deeply democratic theory of moral and political deliberation. (shrink)

By tracing its own narrative from the feminist pragmatism of the 1980s-2000s back to the avant-la-lettre feminist pragmatism of the Progressive Era, this chapter explores the use of narrative within feminist pragmatism. It pays particular attention to uses of narrative in Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Anna Julia Cooper and Jane Addams to reveal the usefulness of narrative as a feminist pragmatist mode of inquiry and of elucidating meaning. The chapter concludes with a brief suggestion of where feminist pragmatist narrative may take (...) us next. (shrink)

In this chapter, the points of intellectual consonance between Jane Addams and John Dewey are explored, specifically their (1) shared belief that philosophy is a method, (2) parallel commitments to philosophical pragmatism and (3) similar convictions that philosophy should serve to address social problems. Also highlighted are points of divergence in their thinking, particularly their positions on U.S. entry into World War I and, more generally, the value of social conflict. Finally, the chapter concludes with what the author believes is (...) Addams's and Dewey's most significant joint contribution to the contemporary philosophical landscape: a vision of practically engaged pragmatism. (shrink)

Perplexity is an epistemic emotion with deep philosophical significance. In ancient Greek philosophy, it is identified as a catalyst for philosophical progress and personal philosophical transformation. In psychological terms, perplexity is the phenomenological sense of lacking immersion in the world, a state of puzzlement and alienation from one’s everyday surroundings. What could make such an emotion philosophically useful? To answer this question, I examine the role of perplexity in Jane Addams’s political theory and ethics. Addams, a social reformer and American (...) pragmatist philosopher, regarded perplexity as an emotion that arises out of specific situations, such as being part of a social settlement, union actions, or trying to surmount gender expectations. Perplexity allows us cognitive distance from our everyday customary morality and ordinary habits of thinking, and this pushes us to become creative in our philosophical reflection. I contextualize perplexity in Jane Addams’s social reforms, and examine the relevance of her ideas today. (shrink)

In Pragmatism’s Evolution, Trevor Pearce demonstrates that the philosophical tradition of pragmatism owes an enormous debt to specific biological debates in the late 1800s, especially those concerning the role of the environment in development and evolution. Many are familiar with John Dewey’s 1909 assertion that evolutionary ideas overturned two thousand years of philosophy—but what exactly happened in the fifty years prior to Dewey’s claim? What form did evolutionary ideas take? When and how were they received by American philosophers? Although the (...) various thinkers associated with pragmatism—from Charles Sanders Peirce to Jane Addams and beyond—were towering figures in American intellectual life, few realize the full extent of their engagement with the life sciences. In his analysis, Pearce focuses on a series of debates in biology from 1860 to 1910—from the instincts of honeybees to the inheritance of acquired characteristics—in which the pragmatists were active participants. If we want to understand the pragmatists and their influence, Pearce argues, we need to understand the relationship between pragmatism and biology. (shrink)

The volume is particularly strong in documenting the step-by-step processes through which Hull House grew. The cumulative effect is to recast readers’ image of Addams and Hull House from a singular individual with her remarkable social settlement, to viewing Addams and Hull House as transmission nodes within complex networks of people, organizations, and institutions dedicated to transforming every facet of city life.

The paper employs a pragmatist perspective on ethics to address the problem of empathy bias, an empirically documented phenomenon in which one’s ability to empathize with another is diminished simply because of that other’s membership in a perceived out-group. I first argue that the philosophical commitments that I take to be distinctive of pragmatism, specifically fallibilism, anti-absolutism, and democracy, require proactive empathetic engagement as a central component of moral inquiry. While this may initially seem to leave pragmatism vulnerable to concerns (...) about empathy bias, I argue that the pragmatist is uniquely equipped to provide a particular sort of response to the problem: a response that does not jettison empathy from moral judgment, but rather seeks to utilize awareness of bias to appropriately correct empathetic engagement when addressing moral problems. (shrink)

This welcome volume offers a rich presentation of the ideas of Jane Addams, with emphases upon her contributions to the Pragmatic movement. It is divided into two parts. Chapters 1–4 “provide a historical and theoretical foundation for Addams’s social philosophy,” and chapters 5–9 “discuss how Addams applied her social theories to a variety of social issues” including pacifism, race and diversity, socialism, education broadly conceived, and religion. There is also an introduction, an afterword, and an extensive bibliography. It is the (...) author’s hope that his study will spur further work on the role of Addams, and other women, in the history of Pragmatism and American philosophy; and I anticipate.. (shrink)

This comprehensive encyclopedia entry discusses the life and works of Jane Addams (1860-1935) who influenced contemporaries John Dewey, William James, and George Herbert Mead. Although not traditionally categorized as a philosopher, Addams was a prolific writer who developed a social philosophy of attentiveness and sympathetic knowledge that prefigures contemporary feminist care ethics.

Jane Addams's early attempt to empower the people with information.

Jane Addams, the founder of Hull House in Chicago, may be best known as a social activist. She was also a brilliantly critical intellectual. Implicit in her many speeches, articles, and books is a view of education as a broad process of cultural transformation and renewal, a view that remains as compelling today as when it was first presented. Addams sees education as the foundation of democracy, the basis for the free expression of ideas. Addams's writings on education are interpreted (...) in an enlightening bio-graphical introduction by Ellen Lagemann. After the initial publication of this work, Barbara L. Jacquette of the Delta Group, Inc., in Phoenix wrote, "Professor Lagemann has brought life and immediacy to Jane Addams's work. Better, she has given us a context that shows us that some of our most pressing issues today are simply old problems in new guises, problems for which some of the old solutions may still be of use." Gerald Lee Gutek of Loyola University of Chicago commented "Lagemann's insightful and sensitive biography reveals Addams's transformation from a reserved graduate of a small women's college into the Progressive reformer and pioneer of the settlement house movement." The essays collected here span a significant portion of Jane Addams's life, from the time she spent in college to her founding of Hull House and beyond. Addams's constant interest in education is reflected in her writings. This book also reveals the many influences on Addams's life, including the philosopher and educator John Dewey. On Education is an important work for educators, women's studies specialists, social workers, and historians. (shrink)

"It is well to remind ourselves, from time to time, that "Ethics" is but another word for "righteousness," that for which many men and women of every generation have hungered and thirsted, and without which life becomes meaningless. Certain forms of personal righteousness have become to a majority of the community almost automatic. But we all know that each generation has its own test, the contemporaneous and current standard by which alone it can adequately judge of its own moral achievements. (...) To attain individual morality in an age demanding social morality, to pride one's self on the results of personal effort when the time demands social adjustment, is utterly to fail to apprehend the situation. This book is a study of various types and groups who are being impelled by the newer conception of Democracy to an acceptance of social obligations involving in each instance a new line of conduct."--. (shrink)

The tales they shared with Addams in the wake of the Devil Baby were more personal and revealing than any they had previously told her: stories of abusive mates ...

A paradigm for peace discovered in the cosmopolitan neighborhoods of poor urban immigrants.

"It is well to remind ourselves, from time to time, that "Ethics" is but another word for "righteousness," that for which many men and women of every generation have hungered and thirsted, and without which life becomes meaningless. Certain forms of personal righteousness have become to a majority of the community almost automatic. But we all know that each generation has its own test, the contemporaneous and current standard by which alone it can adequately judge of its own moral achievements. (...) To attain individual morality in an age demanding social morality, to pride one's self on the results of personal effort when the time demands social adjustment, is utterly to fail to apprehend the situation. This book is a study of various types and groups who are being impelled by the newer conception of Democracy to an acceptance of social obligations involving in each instance a new line of conduct."--. (shrink)