Although the works of male philosophers such as Dewey, Peirce, James and Mead dominate the literature of classic American pragmatism, the writings of Jane Addams provide a unique and provocative feminist pragmatist voice.
Addams recounts her early life in Twenty Years at Hull-House , the only one of her works to continuously remain in print since it was first published in When Jennie was two, her mother, Sarah, died whilst giving birth to her ninth child. As a result, Addams formed a significant bond with her father, John, who was a successful mill owner and politician. John Addams corresponded with Lincoln, and Jane Addams associated her father and Lincoln as moral icons and personal inspirations throughout her life.
The relationship between John and his daughter was important because it afforded Jane the attention of an educated and worldly adult, an opportunity not experienced by many young women of this era. John Addams remarried but there was always a special bond between Jane and he. Although Addams was always a good student, she blossomed in college and became a widely acknowledged campus leader. She later replicated the woman-centered atmosphere at Hull-House.
When Addams graduated from college in , she intended to pursue a medical career, but after a short tine in graduate school, she decided that medicine was not in her future.
The death of her father in that same year placed her life in turmoil. Having lost direction in her life, she fell into a decade-long phase of soul searching, combined with sporadic health problems. During this period she undertook several trips to Europe.
On her second trip, she encountered the pioneering social settlement, Toynbee Hall in London. Toynbee Hall provided young men an opportunity to work to improve the lives of impoverished Londoners. Soon after this encounter Addams developed a plan to start a social settlement in the United States. Addams enlisted the help of her friend Ellen Gates Starr in her noble scheme. Starr had briefly attended Rockford College with Addams, so they shared an understanding of the empowerment that a female community could provide to its residents.
Addams and Starr open the Hull-House settlement in in the heart of a run-down neighborhood on the west side of Chicago. They began with few plans, few resources and few residents but with a desire to be good neighbors to the community. Women, and to a lesser extent men, came from all over the country to live and work as part of this progressive experiment in communal living combined with social activism. At first, Addams had rented the entire second floor and the first floor drawing room of the Hull-House building but eventually the settlement complex grew to accommodate one full city block.
Addams faced an ongoing challenge to explain the work Hull-House had undertaken. People often felt compelled to give settlement projects the familiar label of charity work, but Addams rebuffed this claim. Addams was an effective activist and organizer but she was also keenly attuned to social theory. As a child she had read widely, largely influenced by her father who housed the town library in their home. At Hull-House, Addams attracted the attention of John Dewey, William James and George Herbert Mead, each of whom visited and engaged Addams in lively conversations that proved to be mutually influencing.
Given this intellectual foundation, Addams used her Hull-House experience as a springboard for developing public philosophy in the American Pragmatist Tradition. Addams viewed issues of knowledge as the most profound contemporary challenge. Social settlements were an active effort to learn about one another across class and cultural divides thus building collective knowledge about the individuals who make up this diverse society.
In this manner, Hull-House served as a multi-directional conduit of information about human lives: Addams and her cohorts helped immigrants learn how to navigate the complex American culture while Addams communicated and thematized her experience with immigrants to help white, upper and middle class America understand what it meant to be poor and displaced. Furthermore, Addams viewed this knowledge creation as reciprocal: society benefited from the knowledge that immigrants brought and the immigrants benefited from learning about their new neighbors.
Addams was unique in recognizing that immigrants could contribute to American culture. Addams authored or co-authored a dozen books and over articles after she founded Hull-House. The articles appeared in both scholarly and popular periodicals, establishing Addams as a public philosopher and social leader. Addams was also a much in-demand speaker and she traveled nationally and internationally to make presentations that supported her progressive values.
Addams was one of the few women of the era to transgress the private sphere to successfully influence the public sphere. Polls indicate that Addams became one of the most recognized and admired figures in the United States. She was an influential catalyst for change, lending her name and organizing skills to a variety of causes.
Addams worked with W. DuBois in support of a number of African-American endeavors including writing articles for his publication The Crisis and helping to found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Her tireless effort in support of peace led to Addams receiving the Nobel Peace prize.
Addams died of cancer on May 21, The public memorial at Hull-House filled the streets with mourners and eulogies were published in newspapers nationally and internationally. There are a number of reasons why Addams was not generally recognized as a philosopher until the late twentieth century which include her gender and her association with social work.
Another factor in this lack of recognition is that she was not a systematic philosopher either stylistically or methodologically.
To the trained philosopher, these topics appear far removed from more familiar considerations of epistemology, metaphysics and ethics. However, a careful examination of her work reveals that Addams begins with social phenomena and draws theoretical inference from these experiences. In Democracy and Social Ethics , Addams offers intriguing, even radical, insights into the nature of ethics and epistemology.
To read Addams as a philosopher requires setting aside assumptions about beginning from abstract theoretical positions. As a pragmatist, Addams is strictly interested in social philosophy. Four interrelated cornerstones of her social philosophy are the concepts of sympathetic knowledge, lateral progress, pluralism and fallibilism.
Beginning with her first book, Democracy and Social Ethics and running through all of her works addressing social issues is the notion of sympathetic knowledge.
Fundamentally, sympathetic knowledge is the idea that humans can learn about one another in terms that move beyond propositional knowledge, that is rather than merely learning facts, knowledge is gained through openness to disruptive knowledge.
This idea motivated Addams and the residents of Hull-House to undertake the first urban study of racial demographics, which was published as Hull-House Maps and Papers in By providing a physical location where people of different backgrounds could meet, social knowledge is built up reducing the abstraction of distant others transforming them into concrete, known others. Accordingly, Addams suggests that the many social activities sponsored by Hull-House—clubs, dances, performances, athletics—were not frivolous affairs but a means for breaking down barriers between people, thus fostering sympathetic knowledge.
In Twenty Years at Hull-House and later in The Second Twenty Years at Hull-House, Addams claims that these social activities performed an educative function and that social settlements were in fact thoroughly educative projects. Like Dewey, Addams valued education as the foundation of a healthy democratic society. Addams takes this notion so far as to argue that play is important for a vibrant democracy because it creates the possibility of empathetic imagination. When one plays, one takes on the roles of others and through fictitious inhabitation of these positions begins to empathize with the plight of others.
In this manner, education also contributes to sympathetic knowledge. Similarly, literature and drama can enhance sympathetic knowledge as one empathizes with fictitious characters. Accordingly, Hull-House sponsored community theater as well as the reading of novels. The basis of sympathetic knowledge is experience that is imaginatively extrapolated.
When Addams addresses prostitution in A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil, she employs anecdotes from the Hull-House community to allow her audience to understand the struggles of young women in the big cities.
In this manner, she is neither strictly deontological nor teleological in her moral approach. Rather than dealing with principles of sexuality, for example, or the consequences of prostitution on society, although both considerations are important, Addams begins by attempting to increase knowledge of marginalized women. Inherent in this approach to human ontology is a belief in the fundamental goodness and relationality of people.
Addams believes that if her audience understands what is going on in the lives of others, even if those others are outcasts, then we may begin to care and possibly take positive action on their behalf. For example, in Democracy and Social Ethics , Addams describes her failed political battles with local ward alderman, Johnny Powers who Addams does not name in print.
See them all presented here. Select the category or categories you would like to filter by Physics. Economic Sciences. She saw a broader tolerance among working class people, a generosity of spirit she did not see among her own class. And that's what changed her view of the world.
Knight says Addams worked with other women to bring an end to World War I. Of course, they did not succeed. But after the war, women met again. The international group is still based in Geneva and has offices around the world. Addams' commitment to the needs of others and her international efforts for peace were recognized in when she became the first American woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.
If she were alive today, Knight says, Addams would urge women around the world to come together and organize themselves as a force for peace. So she thought you could advance peace through addressing those issues as well as addressing the issues of war.
Faiza Elmasry writes stories about life in America. She wrote for several newspapers and magazines in the Middle East, covering current affairs, art, family and women issues. Addams, however, believed human beings were capable of solving disputes without violence. She joined a group of women peace activists who toured the warring nations, hoping to bring about peace. In , she headed the Women's Peace Party and shortly thereafter also became president of the International Congress of Women.
Addams wrote articles and gave speeches worldwide promoting peace and she helped found the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom in , serving as its president until and honorary president until her death in She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts in , the first American woman to receive the award. She also wrote a book about her work at Hull House, as well as other books promoting peace.
A heart attack in took a toll on her health and though she pushed on, she never fully recovered. Addams died on May 21, Addams, Jane.
New York: MacMillan, Nobel Prize. Hull House Museum. Scott, Anne Firor. Jane Addams, in James, Edward T. Boyer, editors. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University, MLA — Michals, Debra. Date accessed. American National Biography.
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