How old is jane addams

Thus the identification with the common lot that is the essential idea of Democracy becomes the source and expression of social ethics. One might object that although these are admirable sentiments, they are still spoken as an outsider. What constitutes an outsider?

Addams lived the better part of a half-century in the diverse immigrant neighborhood of Hull House in Chicago. She lived and worked amongst the crime, civic corruption, prostitution, sweatshops, and other ills of the community. When they first started Hull House, Addams and Starr were involved outsiders—an oddity that neighbors looked upon suspiciously. However, time, proximity, and an earnest desire to learn and help won the trust and respect of the neighborhood.

The outsiders became insiders. When Addams wrote or spoke about single women laborers, child laborers, prostitutes, or first and second generation immigrants, she employed first-hand knowledge gained from her own social interactions. Addams leveraged her Hull House experiences to give voice to standpoints marginalized in society. Simultaneously, she worked to give the oppressed their own voice through college extension courses, English language courses, and social clubs that fostered political and social debate.

Addams did not try to arrive at universal moral truths but recognized that the standpoint of Hull House neighbors mattered. These were the most powerless of laborers: predominantly women, many of them immigrants with limited English language skills and in a job that afforded little legal protection or organizing possibilities. Addams extrapolates her experience of these workers to imaginatively inhabit a standpoint and give them voice.

Addams repeatedly gave recognition to the experiences of oppressed peoples that she came to know in an effort to have their concerns acknowledged in the social democracy she was trying to foster. Addams believed recognizing alternative standpoints was important in promoting social progress through sympathetic understanding. Accordingly, if a voice is given to individuals inhabiting marginalized positions in society, it fosters the possibility of better understanding between people as well as actions that can lead to improving their lot.

Addams engaged in the tricky balance of honoring standpoints while simultaneously seeking connections and continuities to build upon. The latter work is a treatise on memory, which is based on the memories of first generation immigrant women. Rather than grounding her theory upon the experiences of famous women theorists or writers—and Addams knew most of the prominent women of her day—Addams based her analysis on the women who were her neighbors at Hull House.

Addams not only grounded her philosophical work in experience, but in the experiences of those on the margins of society. Addams puts experience before theory. She did not begin by positing a theory about these women. Instead, she retold a number of stories she had heard from them and then drew out conclusions about the function of memory. For Addams, theory follows experience. Addams was in the minority among her peers in philosophy or feminism to believe that working class immigrant women not only should be given a voice but also had something important to contribute to the community of ideas.

This would be an amusing anecdote if it stopped there, but Addams described a six-week period of time when Hull House was inundated with stories about the alleged Devil Baby. Visitors even offered Hull House residents money to see the creature despite adamant responses that there was no such baby. Multiple versions of how the Devil Baby came to be arose in the neighborhood and eventually the hysteria made the newspapers.

One version of the story claimed that the Devil Baby was the offspring of an atheist and a devoted Italian girl. When the husband tore a holy picture from the wall claiming that he would rather have a devil in the house, his wish was granted in the form of his coming child LRW 8.

Although a fascinating social phenomenon, the Devil Baby story is of little obvious philosophical importance and it would be easy to dismiss those who perpetuated the story as simpletons caught up in hysteria. Not for Jane Addams. She applied a familiar approach by refusing to pass judgment, listening carefully, and developing a sympathetic understanding. Addams actively worked to grasp their subject position. What she found were women who were serious and highly animated about the Devil Baby.

They used the appearance of the Devil Baby and the excitement it created as an opportunity to discuss important and troubling matters of their life. Addams, who never sought simple answers to complex issues, found a convergence of class, race, and gender dynamics fueling the Devil Baby phenomenon.

These immigrant women were in very unfamiliar surroundings and had to adjust to foreign ideas and practices. Many of these women also had been victims of domestic abuse long before such acts had a distinct label. For these forgotten and beaten women the Devil Baby represented a connection to a past that made more sense to them: one that had clear moral imperatives.

For women who had lived such a hard life, the Devil Baby provided a momentary opportunity for resistance. Husbands and children would listen to them and temporarily forsake beating them for fear of divine retribution as evinced by the Devil Baby. Given the position of the old women, the Devil Baby was the vehicle of resistance and an opportunity for Addams to interject feminist analysis. Addams consistently took and eloquently supported inclusive positions that sought the benefit of society.

While pragmatists typically advocated for social progress, Addams radicalized the extent of that social progress. Addams employs metaphor to explain the concept:. The man who insists upon consent, who moves with the people, is bound to consult the feasible right as well as the absolute right. He is often obliged to attain only Mr. He has to move along with those whom he rules toward a goal that neither he nor they see very clearly till they come to it.

Progress has been slower perpendicularly, but incomparably greater because lateral. He has not taught his contemporaries to climb mountains, but he has persuaded the villagers to move up a few feet higher AML The wealthy enjoyed tremendous progress in healthcare, education, and material well-being.

This redefinition continues to elude us today as class disparity in the United States continues to grow. Addams applied the idea of lateral progress to numerous issues. When she discusses the role of labor unions, she argues that in their attempt to improve conditions for all workers, unions are fulfilling a vital function that society has abrogated. Addams, who had a track record of supporting labor, makes it clear that she does not view collective bargaining as an end in itself.

Addams is not interested in improving the lot of one group of workers over another. For Addams, unions are important in as much as they improve working conditions, raise wages, reduce hours and eliminate child labor for all Americans—lateral progress. Such a judgment serves to separate the wealthy from the poor. Accordingly, the rich can make progress intellectually, materially, technologically, etc.

Addams argues that the poor are often victims of circumstance and that it is the responsibility of society to first understand those who are marginalized and then develop means for their participation in lateral progress.

Charity, although a good, is not lateral progress. A temporary transfer in wealth, while noble, does not constitute real progress in alleviating economic disparity. What Addams sought was a lateral progress that could be brought about by the collective will and manifested through social institutions. Addams is not advocating a laissez-faire capitalism version of equal opportunity that is abstract and rights based. Free market economics influences modern understandings of democracy as merely assuring the adequate opportunity to participate.

Note that Addams does not argue the application of abstract human rights but she instead makes a functional claim about the role of voting in proper democratic representation. It is not that Addams opposes rights but she will continually opt for pragmatist arguments on feminist issues.

Her male pragmatist colleagues were sympathetic to feminist positions but did not make the claims as forcefully or consistently as Addams Seigfried, Radical discourse, a la Marx, has been associated with the call for extreme changes in social institutions and systems.

Although such changes may be arguably desirable, they entail upheaval that will disrupt social relationships at great potential personal cost. Addams sought substantial social progress through mutual agreement and tapping into communal intelligence. Her radical vision refused to give up on the individuals in society and their caring relationships.

Mixing theoretical notions of social change with concrete experiences of community organizing, Addams was a caring radical. Addams was indeed interested in ameliorating social problems, but that does not preclude a broadly construed radical edge to her social philosophy. Two, although Addams employed caring in response to the needs of others, she contributes an active, even assertive, dimension to care ethics not commonly found in feminist theory.

Although care is a simple and widely invoked word, many feminist theorists have invested it with a particular meaning as it applies to ethics. The original motivation for developing care ethics was an acknowledgement that traditional forms of morality, in particular principle-based and consequence-based ethics, did not adequately address the richness of the human condition. These approaches are said to bracket-out emotions, relationships, temporal considerations, reciprocity, and creativity to focus on immediate adjudication of moral conflicts.

Accordingly, the use of rules or consequences can become a reductionist and formulaic response resulting in shortsighted responses to complex and systemic issues. For care ethicists, while principles are not totally ignored, they are tempered by a concern for interpersonal connection. Principles and consequences have an important place in moral deliberation but care theorists seek a more robust and complex sense of morality that cannot ignore the context and people involved.

Care ethicists do not necessarily deny such an assertion but they want to know more. The person doing the spray-painting is a human being whose motivations and circumstances may reveal other variables not sufficiently addressed by the mere recognition of rule violations.

There may be systemic issues involving social opportunities or discrimination or lack of voice that have contributed to this behavior. Care ethicists shift the moral focus from abstract individuals and their actions to concrete, situated people with feelings, friends, and dreams—persons who can be cared about.

Care ethics demands effort, experience, knowledge, imagination and empathy to effectively understand the totality of the moral context. The result is not exoneration of personal responsibility but a richer understanding of the human condition where we are all actors and acted upon. Addams consistently moves beyond formulaic moral accounts of principles or consequences to apply a kind of care ethics to her experiences in the Hull House neighborhood. Proximity is once again crucial as she has direct experience of individuals which better provides the resources for a caring response.

However, as a philosopher, Addams extrapolates her experiences to theorize about others of similar circumstances. She recounts charges against young men who were brought before the Juvenile Court in Chicago which Hull House had helped establish. These charges were categorized by type such as stealing, which included the pilfering of pigeons, blankets, and a bicycle. Another category was disorderly conduct which included picking up coal from railroad tracks, throwing stones at railroad employees, and breaking down a fence.

There was also vagrancy, which included loafing, sleeping on the streets all night, and wandering SYC 56— Addams does not deny the seriousness of some of these infractions but she does not rush to judgment, instead choosing to investigate the context further.

She talks to the young men and asks them about their motivations. Addams views the city as built around the possibility of factory production but ignoring the needs of future workers. Had Addams merely abstracted youth as a category of individuals who seem to be prone to break the law, she could have easily found principles to place a negative judgment on them.

More than merely prefiguring care ethics, Addams infuses a high standard of social responsibility into this moral approach. Addams advocates a duty of social awareness and engagement thus creating the potential for care. Many care ethicists are wary of the notion of duty, as it has been traditionally formulated.

Moral duties have historically entailed claims regarding actions that a person is required to offer on behalf of another. Although such cases get widespread agreement, it becomes more difficult to ascertain what obligation one has to distant others with unclear expectations of success. For example, many Americans have disposable income that could save the life of someone in a poverty stricken country on a distant continent; do they have a moral obligation to give them money and to what extent?

Addams constructs the duty to care differently. Hers is an epistemological demand. For Addams, care ethics must be actively pursued not passively fostered. Finally, Addams extends care ethics to the public realm. She is not content to compartmentalize personal and social morality. Caring is what she desires for democracy and its various institutions. While social settlements epitomize a democratic endeavor for Addams, she applies the same caring values to other institutions.

The creation of the juvenile courts in Chicago represented an example of caring because it mandated contextualized regard for the context of young people. During World War I, Addams found her second major calling: promoting international peace. An avowed pacifist, she protested US entry into World War I, which dinged her popularity and prompted harsh criticism from some newspapers. Addams, however, believed human beings were capable of solving disputes without violence.

She joined a group of women peace activists who toured the warring nations, hoping to bring about peace. In , she headed the Women's Peace Party and shortly thereafter also became president of the International Congress of Women.

Addams wrote articles and gave speeches worldwide promoting peace and she helped found the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom in , serving as its president until and honorary president until her death in She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts in , the first American woman to receive the award.

She also wrote a book about her work at Hull House, as well as other books promoting peace. A heart attack in took a toll on her health and though she pushed on, she never fully recovered. Addams died on May 21, Addams, Jane. New York: MacMillan, Nobel Prize. Hull House Museum. Scott, Anne Firor. Jane Addams, in James, Edward T. Boyer, editors. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University, MLA — Michals, Debra. Date accessed. American National Biography. Jane Adamas.

Accessed 25 July Baughman, et al. Biography in Context , link. In , Addams and Starr opened one of the first settlements in both the United States and North America, and the first in the city of Chicago: Hull House, which was named after the building's original owner. The house provided services for the immigrant and poor population living in the Chicago area. Over the years, the organization grew to include more than 10 buildings and extended its services to include childcare, educational courses, an art gallery, a public kitchen and several other social programs.

In , the construction of the University of Illinois' Chicago campus forced Hull House to move its headquarters, and, unfortunately, most of the organization's original buildings were demolished as a result. However, the Hull residence was transformed into a monument honoring Addams that remains standing today.

Five years later, in , she became the first female president of the National Conference of Charities and Corrections later renamed the National Conference of Social Work. She went on to establish the National Federation of Settlements the following year, holding that organization's top post for more than two decades thereafter. Outside of her work as a prominent social reformer, Addams was a deeply committed pacifist and peace activist.

A frequent lecturer on the subject of peace, she compiled her talks on ending war in the world in Newer Ideals of Peace , published in These three social reformers and peace activists worked together on a special report, Women at The Hague: The International Congress of Women and Its Results , which was published that same year. As part of her commitment to finding an end to war, Addams served as president of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom from to For her efforts, she shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Nicholas Murray Butler, an educator and presidential advisor.

While often troubled by health problems in her youth, Addams's health began to seriously decline after a heart attack in