Abstract
This paper takes up the practice and ideas of Richard Rorty and Jane Addams, considering their work at the intersection of pragmatism and social action. It argues that both Richard Rorty and Jane Addams, each in their own way, were thinking through the significant challenges that confront individuals in their everyday lives: How do we adjudicate between the competing values of individual accountability and helping others in our community? This is our social test, and the way we each answer the question matters for the future of democracy and our degree of social hope. Rorty was a champion of engagement with the community, and believed that out of this experience comes our capacity to creatively weave the fabric of liberal democracy. The paper argues that Addams’s work at Hull-House in Chicago offers concrete examples of the potential of reciprocal social relations, providing practical substance to Rorty’s ideas and showing how we can create social hope through action.
Highlights
In 1961, The Philosophical Review published Richard Rorty’s “Pragmatism, Categories, and Language.” In it, Rorty declared “pragmatism is getting respectable again” [1]
Reconstruction through dialogue between a seemingly unlikely pair is not uncommon. This pairing in particular holds the potential for social growth in Deweyan fashion [8]. Both Richard Rorty and Jane Addams, each in their own way, were thinking through the significant challenge that has confronted individuals in their everyday lives: How do we adjudicate between the competing values of individual accountability and helping others in our community? This is our social test, and the way we each answer the question matters for the future of democracy
Helping was helping—no matter what the area of need—from keeping clothes clean to finding someone to watch the children during work or imparting adequate skills for certain paid jobs. This maternalist approach at Hull-House is part of the explanation for the development of feminist pragmatist ideas by Addams. While she is most renowned for her practice, Addams was perhaps above all things a theorist engaged with the question of how we might work through the dilemma of helping others in our community without compromising our individual needs and wants
Summary
In 1961, The Philosophical Review published Richard Rorty’s “Pragmatism, Categories, and Language.” In it, Rorty declared “pragmatism is getting respectable again” [1]. Addams’s work at Hull-House in Chicago offers concrete examples of the potential of reciprocal social relations, providing practical substance to Rorty’s ideas and showing how we can create social hope through action. It takes up Addams’s practical and, to a lesser degree theoretical, expressions of pragmatism and social morality It considers the social dimensions of Rorty’s articulation of humanism and hope, connecting them to the ideas of a few other pragmatist thinkers. It briefly puts the ideas and actions of the two pragmatists into dialogue, considering how we might benefit from reading Rorty with Addams’s ideas and practice squarely in mind
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