Volume 12, 2024
The World in Crisis: What Is the Possibility of Philosophical and Eco-ethical Renewal?
Sequoya Yiaueki

Pages 149-166
https://doi.org/10.5840/ecoethica202582276
Knowing Others in Jane Addams
Discursive Action and Political Imagination
Using Jane Addams¡¯s concepts of perplexity and sympathetic knowledge, this article presents Addams¡¯s work as a multilayered practice of discursive action. This practice is based on Addams¡¯s use of perplexity, first as the affective state that uncouples knowledge and action, then methodologically, to formulate the problems that uncouple them. This is followed by a structured practice of caring listening found in sympathetic knowledge. The ultimate goal of her practice of discursive action is to shape the public understanding of social problems and the broader political imagination. Shaping public understanding and political imagination are seen as key tools to tackling questions of injustice and marginalization, which are often themselves sources of perplexity.