Work · Pragmatism & US Philosophy
Democracy and Social Ethics
Charity, family, industry, education, politics: in each sphere ethics must become social and democratic.
Introduction
Jane Addams, who had founded the settlement house Hull-House in Chicago with Ellen Gates Starr in 1889, developed this book from lectures and from her life among immigrant neighbours. Each chapter examines one relationship – charity visitor and poor family, parents and grown-up daughters, mistress and domestic servant, employer and workers, teacher and pupil, ward politician and voters – and shows how a morality of individual virtue fails when people do not understand one another’s circumstances. Addams calls instead for a “social morality” learnt through shared experience. The book is now read as an early work of American pragmatism; John Dewey was a friend of Addams and a frequent visitor to Hull-House.
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