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This is the first collection of essays to evaluate John Dewey's pragmatist philosophy from a feminist perspective. The variety of feminist interpretations offered here ranges from Jane Addams's praise for his collegial efforts to resolve the problems of the inner city to contemporary comparisons of his approach with Addams's own critique of capitalism as patriarchal. In between are essays assessing Dewey's contributions to feminist theory and practice both in his lifetime and in regard to contemporary feminist approaches to education, subjectivity, objectivity and truth, and social and political philosophy. At a time when feminists are questioning and developing alternatives to the scientistic value-free inquiry advocated by logical positivism, the myth of detached observation informing the epistemological turn, rationalistic ethics, and the model of an unattached, nonrelational subject, this book reminds us of Dewey's early and passionate opposition to the same assumptions and his reconstruction of philosophy as a &"method of moral and political diagnoses and prognosis.&" It has often been remarked that Dewey's pragmatism provides a genuine alternative to the usual masculinist biases of Western philosophy, and the various essays in this book develop this claim more extensively. Contributors, besides the editor, are Jane Addams, Ana M. Mart&ínez Alem&án, Paula Droege, Marilyn Fischer, Eugenie Gatens-Robinson, Judith M. Green, Lisa Heldke, Ellen Condliffe Lagemann, Erin McKenna, Marjorie C. Miller, Elizabeth Kamarck Minnich, and Shannon Sullivan.
Though many pioneering feminists were deeply influenced by American pragmatism, their contemporary followers have generally ignored that tradition because of its marginalization by a philosophical mainstream intent on neutral analyses devoid of subjectivity. In this revealing work, Charlene Haddock Seigfried effectively reunites two major social and philosophical movements, arguing that pragmatism, because of its focus on the emancipatory potential of everyday experiences, offers feminism its most viable and powerful philosophical foundation. With careful attention to their interwoven histories and contemporary concerns, Pragmatism and Feminism effectively invigorates both traditions, opening them to new interpretations and appropriations and asserting their timely philosophical relevance. This foundational work in feminist theory simultaneously invites and guides future scholarship in an area of rapidly emerging significance.
Contemporary Feminist Pragmatismis an interdisciplinary collection of original essays that explores the present implications of feminism and pragmatism for theory, policy, and action. The notion of "feminist pragmatism" or "pragmatist feminism" has been around since Charlene Haddock Seigfried introduced it two decades ago, however the bulk of the work in this field has been directed toward recovering the feminist strain of classical American philosophy, largely through renewed interest in the work of Jane Addams. This exploration of the origins of feminism and pragmatism has been fruitful in providing a foundation for theoretical considerations. This book takes this work a step further by addressing the modern significance of the nexus of feminism and pragmatism, arguing that these fields hold three common commitments and values: the importance of context and experience, the relationship of politics and values and the production of knowledge and metaphysics, and the need for diversity and thus dialogue among differently situated social groups.
At the heart of feminist theory lies the seemingly intractable issue of essentialism. Feminism has thus far failed to transcend critiques of essentialism and currently offers only two inadequate positions against it. One response reifies the category "women," representing the experience of oppression of privileged women as archetypal for feminism, and the other denies the category because it unjustly overgeneralizes, thus undercutting the possibility of a robust theory of gender oppression. To spur anti-essentialist methods and practice around such issues as sexual violence, feminist theory crucially needs a constructive and politically powerful strategy for defining women.Cressida J. Heyes deftly elucidates and then travels beyond the essentialism debates to rescue the efficacy of feminist theory for activism and research. She offers a genealogy of essentialism, specifically as it applies to the work of Carol Gilligan and Catharine MacKinnon, and employs a Wittgensteinian approach to feminism that understands similarities between women as family resemblances and political decisions about inclusion and exclusion as contextual and purposive. Line Drawings argues for an anti-essentialist method that enables generalizing feminist discourse but insists on paying close attention to the operations of power in constructing claims about women. This is a fresh and vitally important step past stymied debate on what is arguably the most pressing issue in cross-disciplinary feminist theory.
Widely regarded as the father of American psychology, William James is by any measure a mammoth presence on the stage of pragmatist philosophy. But despite his indisputable influence on philosophical thinkers of all genders, men remain the movers and shakers in the Jamesian universe—while women exist primarily to support their endeavors and serve their needs. How could the philosophy of William James, a man devoted to Victorian ideals, be used to support feminism? Feminist Interpretations of William James lays out the elements of James’s philosophy that are particularly problematic for feminism, offers a novel feminist approach to James’s ethical philosophy, and takes up epistemic contestations in and with James’s pragmatism. The results are surprising. In short, James’s philosophy can prove useful for feminist efforts to challenge sexism and male privilege, in spite of James himself. In this latest installment of the Re-Reading the Canon series, contributors appeal to William James’s controversial texts not simply as an exercise in feminist critique but in the service of feminism. Along with the editors, the contributors are Jeremy Carrette, Lorraine Code, Megan Craig, Susan Dieleman, Jacob L. Goodson, Maurice Hamington, Erin McKenna, José Medina, and Charlene Haddock Seigfried.
In the last twenty-five years there has been a great deal of scholarship about John Dewey’s work, as well as continued appraisal of his relevance for our time, especially in his contributions to pragmatism and progressivism in teaching, learning, and school learning. The Handbook of Dewey’s Educational Theory and Practice provides a comprehensive, accessible, richly theoretical yet practical guide to the educational theories, ideals, and pragmatic implications of the work of John Dewey, America’s preeminent philosopher of education. Edited by a multidisciplinary team with a wide range of perspectives and experience, this volume will serve as a state-of-the-art reference to the hugely consequential implications of Dewey’s work for education and schooling in the 21st century. Organized around a series of concentric circles ranging from the purposes of education to appropriate policies, principles of schooling at the organizational and administrative level, and pedagogical practice in Deweyan classrooms, the chapters will connect Dewey’s theoretical ideas to their pragmatic implications.
Explores the dynamic relationship between bodies and the world around them. What if we lived across and through our skins as much as we do within them? According to Shannon Sullivan, the notion of bodies in transaction with their social, political, cultural, and physical surroundings is not new. Early in the 20th century, John Dewey elaborated human existence as a set of patterns of behavior or actions shaped by the environment. Underscoring the continued relevance of his thought, Sullivan brings Dewey into conversation with Continental philosophers -- Nietzsche and Merleau-Ponty -- and feminist philosophers -- Butler and Harding -- to expand thinking about the body. Emphasizing topics such as the role of habit, the discursivity of bodies, communication and meaning, personal and cultural structures of gender, the improvement of bodily experience, and understandings of truth and objectivity, Living Across and Through Skins acknowledges the importance of the body's experience without placing it in opposition to psychological, cultural, and social aspects of human life. By focusing on what bodies do, rather than what they are, Sullivan prompts a closer look at concrete, physical transactions that might be changed to improve human experiences of the world.
Aesthetic experience has had a long and contentious history in the Western intellectual tradition. Following Kant and Hegel, a human’s interaction with nature or art frequently has been conceptualized as separate from issues of practical activity or moral value. This book examines how art can be seen as a way of moral cultivation. Scott Stroud uses the thought of the American pragmatist John Dewey to argue that art and the aesthetic have a close connection to morality. Dewey gives us a way to reconceptualize our ideas of ends, means, and experience so as to locate the moral value of aesthetic experience in the experience of absorption itself, as well as in the experience of reflective attention evoked by an art object.
Idealism, Pragmatism, and Feminism provides an account of the life and writings of Ella Lyman Cabot (1866-1934), a woman who received formal training, but not formal recognition, in the field of classical American philosophy. It highlights the themes of idealism, pragmatism and feminism as they emerged in the course of career as an educational reformer and ethicist that spanned nearly four decades. Cabot's writings, developed in graduate seminars at Harvard and Radcliffe at the turn of the century complement, and in many cases anticipate, the thinking of the "fathers" of the American philosophical cannon: Charles Sanders Peirce, Josiah Royce, William James, and John Dewey. Her formal philosophical writing focuses on the concepts of growth, creativity, and the moral imagination--a fact that is especially interesting given that these concepts are developed by a woman who faced serious obstacles in her personal and intellectual development. Indeed, these concepts are not merely philosophical ideals, but practical tools that Ella Lyman Cabot used to negotiate the gender roles and intellectual marginalization that she faces at the turn of the century. The discipline of philosophy was very slow to incorporate the insights of women into its self-definition. An analysis of the writings of Ella Lyman Cabot reveals this point, but also the pointed ways in which she sought to express her genuinely creative insights.