One of those students was Andrew Toynbee. Barnett describes a threefold rationale for the development and growth of settlements: First, a general distrust that government-sponsored institutions could care for the poor.
In particular, government and private philanthropy appeared to be failing the masses. The second reason Barnett gives for the rise of settlements is the need for information. Barnett believed there was widespread curiosity regarding oppression that he could satisfy with documented observations regarding the circumstances of the poor. Settlements provided an outlet for these fellow feelings. She agrees with him that settlements should not be missions because if they become too ideological, they will fail to be responsive to their neighbors FSS — Addams is very sensitive about a sense of superiority in settlement work.
For Addams, Hull House always combined epistemological concerns with moral ones. This association is appropriate given their friendship and mutual interests; however her intellectual deference to Dewey is often overstated. Dewey is considered one of the greatest American philosophers and his name, along with William James, Charles Sanders Peirce, and Josiah Royce form the traditional list of founding fathers of what is labeled American Pragmatism.
Addams and Dewey were intellectual soul mates from the moment they met in Dewey visited Hull House shortly after it opened and before he moved to Chicago to teach at the University of Chicago. There was much intellectual cross-fertilization between Hull House and the University of Chicago and vice versa. Historian Rosalind Rosenberg describes Addams as a de facto adjunct professor at the University of Chicago. Mary Jo Deegan documents that over the course of a decade Addams taught a number of college courses through the Extension Division of the University of Chicago.
In addition, she refused offers to join the undergraduate and graduate faculty Deegan, Addams and Dewey worked together personally and politically. When Hull House incorporated, Dewey became one of the board members. Dewey would dedicate his book Liberalism and Social Action to Addams. Although Dewey and Addams would gain celebrity status in their lifetime, their fame and legacies are characterized much differently.
Dewey was the great intellectual—a thinker—and Addams was the activist—a doer. As contemporaries, they represent classic archetypes of gender: the male as mind generating theory and the woman as body experiencing and caring. However, there is much evidence that such a characterization is inaccurate. Both John Dewey and his daughter, Jane, credit Jane Addams with developing many of his important ideas including his view on education, democracy, and ultimately philosophy itself Schlipp, Addams maintained a long-term close personal relationship with Mead and his wife, Helen Castle Mead.
His works have been recognized as significant by sociologists but many philosophers have overlooked him. Mead and Addams worked on a number of projects together including pro-labor speeches, peace advocacy and the Progressive Party. When Addams was publicly attacked for not supporting the U. Like Dewey, Mead was a frequent lecturer at Hull House. In , Mead advocated awarding Addams an honorary doctorate from the University of Chicago. The faculty supported the award but the administration overturned the decision eventually making the award in Addams also maintained a friendship with William James — , whose work she cites on many occasions.
James was a pragmatist whose vision of urban improvement would have been shared by Addams. Addams clearly influenced and was influenced by the Chicago School. Although she was often frustrated with the abstract trajectory of the university, Addams embraced reflective analysis. Through her Hull House experience Addams took many opportunities to theorize about the interchange between theory and practice.
For a time, American philosophy, sociology, and social work existed in a symbiotic harmony—each not clearly differentiated from the other but benefiting from the interchange.
Unfortunately, since the early 20 th century when Mead, Dewey, and Addams were together in Chicago, the intellectual genealogy of American philosophy, sociology and social work has more drastically diverged to a point where crossover is less likely and perhaps less welcome.
Lost in the compartmentalization of these disciplines is how Jane Addams played a role in each. In addition to the Romantics Carlyle and Ruskin , the social visionaries Barnett and Tolstoy , and the pragmatists Dewey and Mead Addams was influenced by the great collection of feminist minds who came to work at the social settlement.
Hull House has been described in many different ways, reflecting the complexity and multiplicity of its functions. Hull House residents dined, slept, did domestic chores, and engaged in social activism together. They also discussed and debated ethics, political theory, feminism, and culture while immersed in their tasks and stimulated by the many speakers and visitors to Hull House. The prolonged contact, shared gender oppression, and common mission made for a unique intellectual collective that not only fostered action but also theory.
Ostensibly, Hull House was the first co-educational settlement. Addams recognized the need for male residents so that men in the neighborhood could better relate to Hull House endeavors. Hull House boasted some of the great minds and agents of change of the era. Alice Hamilton — , a physician who trained in Germany and the U.
She went on to teach at Harvard where she became a nationally recognized social reformer and peace activist. Rachel Yarros — , a twenty-year resident at Hull House, was also a physician who taught at the University of Illinois. The university created a position for Yarros in recognition of her tremendous contribution to social hygiene and sex education.
Author and feminist theorist, Charlotte Perkins Gilman — , was a resident for a short period of time. Gilman thought highly of Addams but had no stomach for settlement existence amongst the oppressed. Sophonisba Breckinridge — graduated from Wellesley and went on to obtain both a Ph.
Her greatest contribution was in the area of social work education. Edith Abbott would obtain a Ph. These are only a few of the more well-known residents but numerous feminists used their Hull House experience as a springboard to careers in social reform or professions of various sorts. Although Hull House was replete with extraordinary minds, no one was likely to be as intellectually challenging to Addams as Florence Kelley — A single mother with three children, Kelley found a home at Hull House where she opened an employment center and began conducting research on sweatshops for the Illinois Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Kelley was one of the most distinguished social reformers of the early 20 th Century. At Hull House, Kelley altered the dynamics of the resident community. She brought a sense of class-consciousness along with a great strength of conviction. Kelley also learned from Addams, who she admired throughout her life.
Perhaps the legacy of the many accomplishments of the Hull-House residents suffered because of the fame of their leader, but given the opportunity, each expressed their admiration and gratitude to Addams for making Hull House the hotbed of ideas and action that it was. Addams was the most visible leader of a remarkable group of educated activists whose mutual respect allowed intellectual growth to flourish. Finally a few other influences are worthy of mention.
Addams was quite well versed in the Christian bible and had attended a number of religious courses during her time at Rockford Seminary. Addams used religious language on occasion to help get her message out to Christian constituencies.
Addams was also well acquainted with Greek philosophy and made references to Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle in her work. Addams was attracted to the ability of Greek philosophers to move between personal and social concerns rather than compartmentalizing their philosophical analysis. Some have suggested that Addams was influenced by August Comte — and the positivists. Addams would have been attracted to his ideas about social progress and his development of a religion of humanity.
Athough she did not believe that reading was a substitute for direct experience, she did suggest more than once that reading great works of fiction was a means of developing a sympathetic understanding. Although Addams had a wide variety of influences, as we have seen, she was not a derivative thinker as many commentators suggest. All the while, she influenced many others as she made her unique contributions to American and feminist philosophy.
Feminist philosophers have attended to the impact of context on theory more than mainstream philosophers. Although there are lively debates within feminist philosophical circles regarding the nature of objectivity, many including Dorothy Smith, Nancy Hartsock, Hilary Rose, Alison Jaggar, and Sandra Harding have developed the notion that knowledge is indeed situated.
Harding describes a feminist standpoint as something to be achieved rather than as a passive perspective. Through the understanding of the perspectival aspect of knowledge claims, standpoint epistemology can create libratory knowledge that can be leveraged to subvert oppressive systems. One of the challenges of standpoint theory is how to give voice to multiple positions without falling back on hierarchies that favor certain standpoints over others.
Jane Addams demonstrates an appreciation for the spirit of standpoint theory through her work and writing at Hull-House. Despite the privileged social position she was born into, her settlement avocation immersed her in disempowered communities.
Thus the identification with the common lot that is the essential idea of Democracy becomes the source and expression of social ethics. One might object that although these are admirable sentiments, they are still spoken as an outsider. Social Reform: Addams was a social reformer. She was an advocate of organized labor and strove to eliminate poverty rather than to comfort the poor. She was not a radical, but rather she sought to find the middle ground in regard to controversial issues.
Conservatives saw her as being too radical, while other social reformers and advocates of labor viewed her as being too conservative. Mainly, Addams took the role of mediator and spoke and wrote on the topic of labor, attempting to educate the public. Through her work, she not only worked to improve the condition of immigrants, but also of African Americans. She was not free from prejudice, but did work with blacks and spoke for the equal opportunity for black men and women.
Education Reform: Addams worked to persuade the city to build a school in the neighborhood surrounding Hull House, and was an active advocate of educational initiatives. She was named one of the reform appointees of the school board by Mayor Dunne in Addams became chairman of the School Management Committee. Peace Advocacy: Her work toward peace was greatly influenced by the writings of Leo Tolstoy.
Addams was not active in international politics until the Spanish American War broke out, and then she became an active advocate for peace. In a speech in St. Louis in , she stated "that it seems so much more magnificent to do battle for the right than to patiently correct the wrong.
A war throws back the ideals which the young are nourishing into the mold of those which the old should be outgrowing. We incite their young men's ambitions not to irrigate, to make fertile the sanitary, barren plains of the savage, but to fill it with military posts and to collect taxes and tariffs" Davis, Not many progressives opposed war.
Addams was one of the few who did. Many shunned her for her opinions, especially after World War I broke out. She sought an international justice that would elicit international peace. Since she opposed US involvement in World War I, she was deemed unpatriotic and was considered one of the most dangerous women in America. Women of this time had a difficult time regaining their reputation once they were publicly ridiculed, but Jane Addams was eventually able to do so.
Views on Prostitution: She wrote a book on prostitution. To many Americans, she became the nation's custodian of sexual purity. In her book, A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil , Addams asserted that with a steady salary women would not become prostitutes: if the economic needs of women were met, they would not resort to prostitution.
Harvard University Library, n. Addams became a prolific writer and speaker, and she helped to found the National Child Labor Committee. In the early 20th century, Addams became active in the international peace movement. She opposed American involvement in the First World War, a controversial opinion which led to her expulsion from the Daughters of the American Revolution.
This story is captured her Peace and Bread in the Time of War Jane Addams was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in , and she continued to live and work at Hull House until she died in This work may also be read through the Internet Archive.
Selected Bibliography Addams, Jane. Addams, Jane, A Centennial Reader , ed. Neumann and an introduction by William O. New York, Macmillan, Addams, Jane, Democracy and Social Ethics. Republished with an introductory life of Jane Addams by A.
Cambridge, Mass. Addams, Jane, Newer Ideals of Peace. New York Macmillan, Farrell, John C. Baltimore, Johns Hopkins Press,
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