On the Meaning of Democracy in the European Union

Using some of Immanuel Kant's ontological categories, and the categories of meaning, the author shows some methodological difficulties met when defining democracy in EU law: the difficulties with categorization because there do not exist complete systems of categories but categories differ and give different research outcomes; with the concept of democracy that is founded upon the recognition of the very absence of any definite foundation and is a multidimensional concept having among others legal and political dimension; with law and politics being autonomous systems with distinct discourses and understandings of categories; with the EU lacking its own legal definition of democracy, which is but in the EU’s political acts. The article shows the turning point from empirical (doing, legal practice) to explaining (theory) at the time a researcher poses the question “Why?”.