Evolutionary Inclusion in the Philosophy of Jane Addams

Abstract

In this review essay, Jennifer Kiefer Fenton examines Marilyn Fischer’s first of a planned 3-volume project on the philosophy of Jane Addams. Fischer’s volume on Jane Addams’s Evoutionary Theorizing brings close attention to source materials that Addams used for her classic work, Democracy and Social Ethics. As a result, Fischer is able to demonstrate that Addams was deeply engaged with social and ethical concepts that were undergoing transformation in the wake of Darwin’s evolutionary theory. Fenton’s review of Fischer’s volume argues that readers will find new groundworks for understanding why Addams resisted individualistic morality and preferred to use terms like association, cooperation, perplexity, propinquity, motives, sympathy, social ethics, and of course, democracy. In reply to Fenton’s review, Fischer affirms key findings and describes historical reasons why a more coherent recapitulation of Addams’s evolutionary method of ethical deliberation would be difficult to achieve.