Feminist Interpretations of John Dewey (review)

Book Reviews 215 Feminist Interpretations of John Dewey Charlene Haddock Seigfried, editor University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002 xi + 317 pp Overall, this volume presents John Dewey's work as a rich philosophic resource for contemporary feminists. Unlike other volumes in this series, it is less a feminist critique of exclusionary philosophies, but rather it portrays Dewey as a theorist and activist who emphasized diversity and inclusion, listened to and learned from many women, and provided a philosophic framework for future feminist work. The book's multi-faceted approach, ranging from education and politics to epistemology and ethics, demonstrates the wide range of Dewey's own writings. The scope of these essays also demonstrates how feminist philosophy in the last decades has broadened to include issues relating to all unrepresented groups, asking questions about equality, inclusiveness, hierarchical relationships, and power structures. As some of the essayists in this volume point out, Dewey's work is particularly relevant to these larger questions. This text is one of 20+ volumes in the "Re-reading the Canon" series edited by Nancy Tuana. The series intends to both analyze the gender biases in the traditional philosophic canon, as well as engage in the recovery of "lost" voices of the women who were influential in the creation of these philosophies. This volume does a good job in identifying some of the women who influenced Dewey's work, including Jane Addams, Ella Flagg Young, Lucy Sprague Mitchell and others. Pragmatist-feminist scholarship in the recent decade has shown us how broad the pragmatist vision was in the era of James, Addams and Dewey. Seen in a cultural context, pragmatism extended beyond philosophers to educators, reformers, and social workers, shaping a cultural and intellectual conversation among activists as well as thinkers. Charlene Haddock Seigfried's introduction draws out the main ideas of Dewey's philosophy that are amenable to feminist thought, including his understanding that the task of philosophy includes criticizing prejudices, pointing out in Dewey's words that philosophy itself "did not develop in an unbiased way from an open and unprejudiced origin" (p. 6), a sentiment that has often been echoed by feminist philosophers. The role of philosophy, according to Seigfried's interpretation of Dewey, is to "work with others whose everyday lives are already transforming the world" (p. 3), recovering the political/public work of pragmatist philosophy. Seigfried claims that early feminism "was already deeply rooted in pragmatism" (p. 2). While that may have been true of many social reformers involved in the setdement house movement, or the early pacifist movement, it would be difficult to make the claim that Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony or the radical feminists like Alice Paul were grounded in Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society Winter, 2005, Vol. XLI, No. 1 216 Book Reviews pragmatist thinking. She says in this essay that Dewey "explicitly argued for the possibility and desirability of women's special angle of vision" (p. 10) but she also admits that Dewey did not always understand the restrictions placed on women by cultural institutions. As an example, she cites the Dewey and Tufts essay on "The Family" in Ethics which defends traditional and male perspectives of the family. Seigfried's essay, "John Dewey's Pragmatist Feminism," partially summarizes some of the now-familiar themes of her ground-breaking 1996 text, Pragmatism and Feminism, pointing to some of the women who were influential on the early development of pragmatism. However her main point in this essay is to "bring together in one place and analyze most of (Dewey's) reflections on women," (p. 9) to refute the claim that he did not write about women or about racism. The fact that Dewey's philosophies of democratic inclusiveness, his understanding of philosophy as "a critique of prejudice," and his focus on everyday realities and experiences offer significant support for feminism is clear from this essay and others in this volume. However, making the case that Dewey himself consistendy extended his philosophical ideas to the realities of women's lives is less clear. Seigfried finds specific examples in such articles as Dewey's "A Symposium on Women's Suffrage" ([1911] 1978), in a 1915 letter...