Socializing Democracy: Jane Addams and John Dewey

Abstract

The author argues that the contributions of Jane Addams and the women of the Hull House Settlement to pragmatist theory, particularly as formulated by John Dewey, are largely responsible for its emancipatory emphasis. By recovering Addams’s own pragmatist theory, a version of pragmatist feminism is developed that speaks to such contemporary feminist issues as the manner of inclusion in society of diverse persons, marginalized by gender, ethnicity, race, and sexual orientation; the strengths and limitations of standpoint theory; and the need for feminist ethics to embrace the social nature of morality. The model of social democracy that informs the pragmatist shift from a detached theory of knowing to an engaged theory of understanding differentiates it from both liberal individualism and communitarianism. Dewey’s repeated attacks on the incoherence of the model of classical liberal individualism, for example, are even more persuasive when seen in the context of the model of the intersubjective constitution of the individual that Addams develops from examining the relation of personal development to social interaction among the women residents of Hull House.