Thread | Brutkey

AHAHAHAH, so I learned back then from my philosophy professor that John Dewey interpreted democracy as a system that does need democratic beings, as in "homo democraticus."

Now, John Dewey wrote about "Democracy as a Form of Life"—as in a lifestyle—but it was translated into German as "democratic creature" because "Lebensform" means something like "creature" in almost all interpretations. In very specific contexts, it could also be interpreted as "how life organizes itself," but it is basically never used like that.

And now there are people writing things like "humans are democratic beings"—"Der Mensch ist ein demokratisches Wesen."

So I think there's a good chance that a significant part of the German philosophical discourse on democracy can be traced back to a translation error.

#philosophy #democracy #germany