Rorty, Addams, and Social Hope

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.

Jane Addams’s Pragmatist Method Extended: Care Work Between Abstract Rules and Situated Practice

“…Addams’s Democracy and Social Ethics has been presented as the theoretical epitome paralleling her pragmatic practice (Schneiderhan, 2013; Scott, 1964; Seigfried, 2002). Eric Schneiderhan (2013) views it as a key pragmatic text as it is “increasingly being recognized as part of the pragmatist effervescence of the late 19th and early 20th centuries” (p. 425). Democracy is the place where Addams most extensively describes “perplexity” and the ensuing “adjustment” of social morals.…”

Giving a voice to patient experiences through the insights of pragmatism

“…The philosophical position is more than a way to comprehend how truths are realized, it involves modes to think about the world surrounding ethics, education, politics and religion to name a few (Cojocaru, 2020;Spencer, 2019). Essentially pragmatism aims to understand the philosophical enquiry required to lessen social problems identified via human experiences (Schneiderhan, 2013).…”

“…Whilst Dewy envisaged civic action as the ethical heart in harnessing meliorism, Richard Rorty, another prominent pragmatist eschewed the idea meliorism aspires for something more than the reciprocity and solidarity that emerges out of having collective experiences (Schneiderhan, 2013). As such, hope has ability to bind people together.…”