This essay introduces some of the many interests, methodologies, and goals that the philosophical tradition of classical American philosophy, usually referred to as pragmatism, shares with feminist theories. Because pragmatism developed along with the emergence of departments of philosophy in the United States, it also begins recovering the shared history of some of the first women to receive philosophy degrees. It claims that women in and out of the academy influenced pragmatism and shows how contemporary feminist philosophers continue to challenge and appropriate it.

By tracing a specific development through the approaches of Peirce, James, and Dewey I present a view of (classical) pragmatist epistemology that invites comparison with recent work in feminist epistemology. Important dimensions of pragmatism and feminism emerge from this critical dialectical relationship between them. Pragmatist reflections on the role of reason and philosophy in a changing world encourage us to see that philosophy's most creative and most responsible future must also be a feminist one.

Charlotte Perkins Gilman and John Dewey were both pragmatists who recognized the need to restructure the environment to bring about social progress. Gilman was even more of a pragmatist than Dewey, however, because she addressed problems he did not identify—much less confront. Her philosophy is in accord with the spirit of Dewey's work but in important ways, it is more consistent, more comprehensive and more radical than his instrumentalism.

Both Jane Addams and John Dewey see human beings as ultimately creative in nature and as radically connected to each other. In this paper I look to these ideas to provide a theoretical model that is able to explain why we are able to extend our care to others outside of our intimate circle of family and friends, and to show us how we can purposefully move to the next higher level of moral reasoning.

Dewey provides an ethics that is committed to those aspects of experience that have been associated with the “feminine.” In addition to an argument against the devaluation of the affective and of concrete relationships, we also find in Dewey's ethics a thoughtful appreciation of how and why these things are essential to our moral life. In this article I consider the importance of the affective and of relationships in Dewey's ethics and set out aspects of Dewey's ethics that might be useful resources for feminist writers in ethics.

Neither philosophy in general, nor deconstruction in particular, should be thought of as a pioneering, path-breaking, tool for feminist politics. Recent philosophy, including Derrida's, helps us see practices and ideas (including patriarchal practices and ideas) as neither natural nor inevitable—but that is all it does. When philosophy has finished showing that everything is a social construct, it does not help us decide which social constructs to retain and which to replace.

In this essay, I argue that Richard Rorty's version of pragmatism focuses too much on community, and gives insufficient attention to the workings of power and the necessary relation between theory and practice. I then turn briefly to the work of Michel Foucault for a better understanding of power relations. Finally, I argue for the value of learning from a group of writers who connect theory and practice in a way that attends to both community and power relations.

We sometimes experience more than we can say, and often it is the “questions” posed by such nondiscursive reality to which feminist writings speak most profoundly. Feminists should therefore decline Richard Rorty's neopragmatist exhortation to forgo all appeals to “women's experience.” Invoking an alternative account of pragmatism's import for feminism, I explore the problematic relationship between the experience of being pregnant and the language we use in talking about it.

George Herbert Mead was a dedicated progressive and internationalist who strove to realize his political convictions through participation in numerous civic organizations in Chicago. These convictions informed and were informed by his approach to philosophy. This article addresses the bonds between Mead's philosophy, social psychology, and his support of women's rights through an analysis of a letter he wrote to his daughter-in-law regarding her plans for a career.

I cite areas of pragmatism and feminism that have an intersection with or an appeal to the other, including the notions of the universal and/or normative, and foundationalist lines in general. I deal with three areas from each perspective and develop the notion of their intersection. Finally, the paper discusses the importance of a pragmatic view for women's lives and the importance of psychoanalytic theory for finding another area where pragmatism and feminism mesh.

I outline a pragmatic account of evidence, arguing that it allows us to underwrite two implications of feminist scholarship: that knowledge is socially constructed and constrained by evidence, and that social relations, including gender, race, and class, are epistemologically significant. What makes the account promising is that it abandons any pretense of a view from nowhere, the view of evidence as something only individuals gather or have, and the view that individual theories face experience in isolation.

While contemporary feminist philosophical discussions focus on the oppressiveness of universality which obliterates “difference,” the complete demise of universality might hamper feminist philosophy in its political project of furthering the well-being of all women. Dewey's thoroughly functionalized, relativized, and fallibilized understanding of universality may help us cut universality down to size while also appreciating its limited contribution. Deweyan universality may signify the ongoing search for a genuinely common language in the midst of difference.

This essay introduces Jessie Taft's pragmatist feminist dissertation, which was written under the guidance of George Herbert Mead at the University of Chicago in 1913 and published in 1915. It gives a brief biography of Taft and summarizes the four chapters of her dissertation, the second of which is reprinted below.

This piece is Chapter Two of Jessie Taft's 1913 doctoral dissertation The Woman Movement from the Point of View of Social Consciousness.

An official letter reporting the unauthorized Ph.D. examination at Harvard University of Mary Whiton Calkins records the anomalous position which women have occupied in philosophy from the beginning.