John Dewey, Jane Addams, and the Pragmatist Road to Democracy

Dewey published “The Ethics of Democracy” in 1888, a few years before arriving in Chicago (1894) and encountering Jane Addams, who in 1889 had established Hull House there, an innovative experience of settlement aimed at supporting a process of empowerment and social growth among disadvantaged children and adults. The Hull House experience was inspirational for Dewey since it was, in some way, the living portrait of his idea of democracy, intended not as a form of government but as an associated form of life that combines ethical and “practical” elements regarding individual and collective action; emotional and relational elements regarding ways of being together and of building and cultivating relationships; and epistemic and cognitive elements, regarding types of judgment, reasoning, and thought, which support the maintenance and development of a democratic community based on reflective processes. Dewey’s vision of democracy is consistent with Jane Addams’s vision of the ethical implications of democracy, as highlighted in Democracy and Social Ethics (1902), where Addams points out that democracy is, first and foremost, a normative and practical reference for individual and collective life and that therefore democratic life requires an ethical transformation of social structures. This chapter explores and compares Addams’s and Dewey’s visions and shows that both can be considered as the foundation for a pragmatist understanding of democracy, devised as an ethical and practical narrative of democracy, which according to Seigfried is “radically different from the liberal model” as pragmatists “understand democracy as a form of association especially appropriate for persons who are constituted by the multiple relations through which consciousness evolves and values develop” (Seigfried, 1999, p. 210).