The author argues that a continued analysis of the relationship between "Bildung" and democracy only makes sense when referring back to the "classic" intention of understanding "Bildung" as creative, critical and transformative processes which change the relationship of self and world in conjunction with a changing social and material environment. This is not possible however within the historical framework of a dualistic and foundationalist subject-object philosophy, which has led to the two distinct and rather distorted notions of "Bildung" prevalent in the nineteenth century. The idea of "Bildung" and "democracy" has to be conceived interdependently. John Dewey, like no other theorist, was dedicated to the study of the relationship between democracy and education. In this article, the author traces this relationship in Dewey's work from two perspectives both focusing on the notion of "Bildung" and its relation to democracy. In the first part the author looks at Dewey's understanding of "subjectivity". In part 2 the author looks at the relationship between "Bildung" (as a transformative process) and democracy in such a way that the social dimension of processes of "Bildung" becomes apparent. Part 3 focuses on the theory of learning and deals with the relationship between "Bildung" and knowledge acquisition. (Contains 21 notes.)