Open Weltanschauung to Build a Democratic Behavior: The Actuality of Mannheim’s Thought

This essay pieces together some key theoretical issues from Karl Mannheim’s democratic model and draws the attention to how, according to the author, democratization requires a collective cultural dimension linked to an open Weltanschauung. Subsequently, it presents the need to enhance a personal dimension for a development of a democratic behavior and shows how this latter behavior is an attempt to cope with ambiguities and limits that lead to the degeneration of democracy, in historysharp turns. In conclusion, it will argue that the concept of democratic behavior can contribute to addressing other urgent needs of past and present society.