Jane Addams's Progressive Democracy Hull-House and the Ethics of Reform

Abstract

This article examines how conditions in turn-of-the-century Chicago seemed inimical to uniting progressive policies and democratic politics, and shows how Jane Addams was unusual for her era in her simultaneous commitment to progressivism and democracy. In Democracy and Social Ethics and Twenty Years at Hull-House, Addams argues that humanity's ethical values must evolve in response to the new urban conditions emerging in the twentieth century. This article identifies various philosophical conflicts with which Addams had to deal in her attempt to reconcile democracy and progressivism, and shows how her experiences at Hull-House structured her responses to those philosophical oppositions. The three oppositions that Addams dealt with are the distinction between private or individual reform and public reform, the ethical gulf between abstract ethics (i.e., “honesty”) and lived ethics (i.e., “neighborliness”), and the divergent interests of the wealthy and the poor.