John Dewey, Jane Addams and the Pragmatist Road to Democracy

This paper is part of a collective project on “Democratic Education" and is aimed at identifying the main sources of pragmatist understanding of democracy, devised as an ethical and practical narrative of democracy which contrasts both with the Western and neo-liberal interpretation as well as with its counter narratives; it shows how Addams’ and Dewey’s visions of democracy are the main references to be explored in depth in order to highight their influence and persistence. 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 there Hull House, 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, which embeds: 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 highlighted in «Democracy and Social Ethics» (1902) where she points out that democracy is, first of all, a normative and practical reference for individual and collective life and that therefore democratic life requires an ethical transformation of social structures. Both Addams and Dewey have an ethical and practical understanding of democracy intended as a form of associated living and mutual engagement that offers us the possibility to highlight its educational potential.