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Hypatia 15.3 (2000) 189-192



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Book Review

Pragmatism and Feminism: Reweaving the Social Fabric


Pragmatism and Feminism: Reweaving the Social Fabric. By Charlene Haddock Seigfried. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.

When Charlene Haddock Seigfried described the "eclipse of pragmatism," that is, the disappearance of pragmatism from the "core curricula of philosophy," she could have used my academic history as a typical case to illustrate her point. For in my many years as a philosophy student, I never had a course in classic American philosophy. Nor for that matter, do I remember such a course even being offered. So in the early 1980s, when my dissertation directors suggested that I read Dewey, I could not understand what could be gained from such a time-consuming task. Their recommendation seemed like an unnecessary detour. Eventually, I did take their advice--but only after a prolonged delay of nearly a year.

My reluctance to begin a serious examination of Dewey's philosophy was [End Page 189] based more on style than substance. Although I had read only a small fraction of his work, I thought I knew enough to know I did not want to read any more. It seemed to me that Louis Mumford had it right: "Mr. Dewey's pages are as depressing as a subway ride-they take one to one's destination, but a little the worse for wear" (Mumford 1926, 255-56). Instead of a "depressing ride," I wanted to be exhilarated, as I had been years before, when I first read Plato and was inspired to major in philosophy. And while Richard Rorty would later put Dewey in the category of "inspiring" philosophers (Rorty 1998), I did not think then, and frankly still do not think, that Dewey belongs in that category--even if I admit I can learn from him and, in fact, agree with many of his ideas.

This personal account is necessary as a preface to my review for two reasons. First, I want to make it clear that when I praise Charlene Haddock Seigfried's book, I do so because of the merits of her book, not because I am a Dewey enthusiast. Second, with the advantage of hindsight, it is now obvious to me that I would have benefitted enormously if Seigfried's book had been available when I was writing my dissertation. Instead of avoiding the assignment to read Dewey, as I did for such a long time, her Pragmatism and Feminism: Reweaving the Social Fabric could have functioned as a kind of roadmap for locating ideas that could be "appropriated" to address the social questions I was exploring. Assuredly, her work could have helped me understand (much sooner than I actually did) why I needed to study Dewey in the first place. And in so doing, it would have shown me that reading the early pragmatists-both within the academy and without-was not a detour at all.

Seigfried's explication of the main tenets of classic American philosophy is structured to do two things: highlight materials to be "appropriated" and, simultaneously, uncover hidden assumptions, prejudices, inconsistencies, and errors to be "purged." She concentrates more attention on Dewey than on James, possibly because the latter was often directly opposed to feminist ideas, whereas in most cases, the former was sympathetic, even if his vision was sometimes limited. And along with Dewey and James, those "classical male pragmatists [who] philosophized from the center," Seigfried also gives voice to those who spoke "from the margins," to early feminists or people of color such as Jane Addams, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and W. E. B. Du Bois. It is the juxtaposition and, thereby, the interplay of these differing voices that makes Seigfried's book such a valuable resource.

Admittedly, I have several points of disagreement with Seigfried--a few of which I will mention here. First of all, as I have argued elsewhere (Upin 1993), unlike Seigfried, I am not very forgiving of the way Dewey used (or often misused) the word "science" when he claimed that "science" can tell us how to live...

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