Summer Institute of American Philosophy
Report from the Field: Women at the 2012 Summer Institute on American Philosophy by Carol Bensick
From July 15 to 22, I attended the Summer Institute on American Philosophy an annual program of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy, in Eugene, OR. My paper, ”Reading Dewey Reading Addams as Philosopher” (concerning John Dewey, the late nineteenth–early twentieth-century philosophy professor, and Jane Addams, the famed co-founder of the pioneering community center called "Hull House"), was scheduled in a session titled “Feminist Pragmatism.” I pointed out (with specialized input from Charlene Seigfried of Purdue University in the audience and Marilyn Fischer of the University of Dayton as the chair) how in his invited preface to a reprint of Addams’ book on her pacifist activities in World War I, Peace and Bread in Time of War, Dewey shows how Addams’ pacifism differed from that of her colleagues by being at bottom philosophical and suggested that this was a way to get pacifist skeptics to reconsider her argument in the book for giving up traditional political ways to organize international government and replace them with democratic methods inspired by the immigrants’ organizations at Hull House.
