Democratizing Responsibility: Jane Addams’s Pragmatist Ethics

Abstract

Jane Addams’s approach to responsibility deserves attention from contemporary theorists, largely because it is rooted in a pragmatist understanding of democracy. As a pragmatist, Addams stresses that democracy is a “rule of living,” not simply a set of political institutions. Democratically committed citizens, she argues, must share responsibility for harms arising from processes to which they are connected. They also must learn from and work with people whose experiences of these processes are different from their own. Not all of Addams’s ideas have stood the test of time. Still, her pragmatist approach to responsibility is superior to those of Iris Marion Young and Jean Bethke Elshtain. An exploration of Addams’s thought illuminates the limitations of Young’s separation of blame and character development from the theme of shared responsibility, and suggests that Elshtain’s understandings of character development will be unlikely to help citizens respond to problems that confront them.