Jane Addams’s Sociology of Moral Practice and Practice of Moral Sociology

This chapter primarily aims to illuminate Jane Addams’s unique and remarkable contribution to social theorising about morality. It is argued that Addams offers an alternate vision of moral theorising, which takes moral engagement via social reform as its starting point and sees moral theorising as best arising from engaged and challenging moral living. This reflects an integral pragmatist moral epistemology developed and enacted by Addams, which sees moral knowledge as arising from socially engaged experience. Through this epistemological perspective, Addams delivers resounding critiques of abstract moral theorising. She is also critical of academic focuses on collecting data in abstraction from working towards social reform. Addams thus provides unique insights into how moral theorising relates to normative argument and social action. Crucial to Addams’s arguments are the roles that interaction, emotion (notably sympathy), and perplexity play in engendering social change on a personal and social scale. Finally, it is argued that Addams’s overlooked work The Long Road of Woman’s Memory illuminates the significance of memory to moral agency.