Becoming Human Together
This English-language book is a concise and adapted version of a substantially more extensive scholarly work originally written in Dutch. The original study consists of five interconnected parts: Human Becoming, Society, Institutional Translation, Democracy Redesigned, and The Polycentric and Correctable Model of Democracy. Together, these parts develop a continuous line of reasoning from a conception of humanity, through an analysis of social conditions and power, to proposals for institutional and democratic reform.
The English edition does not reproduce the complete Dutch work chapter by chapter. Detailed theoretical discussions, methodological elaborations, legal analyses, examples, repetitions, and context-specific applications have been condensed. The purpose of this version is to make the central argument accessible to a broader international readership while preserving its conceptual foundations, normative structure, and principal institutional proposals. It should therefore be read as a concentrated presentation of the larger research project rather than as a literal or exhaustive translation.
The inquiry begins with a persistent question: how should societies and institutions be organized if human beings are understood not as isolated and fully self-sufficient individuals, but as embodied, relational, vulnerable, and continuously developing people?
This question requires an interdisciplinary approach. No single field can adequately explain the interaction between human development, social relationships, law, power, economics, technology, culture, and ecological conditions. Legal scholarship clarifies rights, obligations, institutional authority, and the limits of public power, but cannot by itself explain how human capacities develop or how social structures shape people’s opportunities. Philosophy examines dignity, freedom, responsibility, and justice. Psychology and neuroscience provide insights into cognition, emotion, behavior, and development. Sociology, anthropology, and political science illuminate social relationships, culture, power, conflict, and collective organization. Public administration and economics examine institutional practice, incentives, production, distribution, and decision-making. Ecology reveals the natural conditions and boundaries within which every society and economy must operate.
The broad scope of the original research is therefore intentional rather than incidental. Social inequality, democratic legitimacy, institutional failure, technological power, ecological disruption, and human development are deeply interconnected. Studying them in isolation risks overlooking the mechanisms through which they reinforce one another. An interdisciplinary perspective makes it possible to connect these domains and formulate a more coherent framework for institutional evaluation.
Such breadth inevitably has limits. This book does not claim to replace specialist scholarship in any of the disciplines or policy fields on which it draws. Its aim is integrative: to identify relevant connections, expose hidden assumptions, and develop a shared conceptual framework that can support further empirical research, philosophical criticism, legal elaboration, and practical experimentation[1].
The central concept of this framework is human becoming. It expresses the idea that being human is not a completed state but an open process shaped by relationships, material circumstances, cultural meanings, institutions, technologies, and ecological systems. Human capacities do not develop in isolation. Autonomy, identity, moral judgment, agency, and participation emerge through interaction with others and within conditions that individuals do not create alone.
This perspective affects how institutions are understood and assessed. Formal legality, democratic procedure, economic efficiency, and administrative stability remain important, but they are insufficient as exclusive criteria. Institutions must also be evaluated according to whether they protect equal human worth, provide basic security, support relational autonomy and developmental opportunity, distribute power fairly, maintain reliable and accessible knowledge, remain open to correction, and respect ecological and intergenerational boundaries.
The first part of the original work, Human Becoming, develops the anthropological and interdisciplinary foundations of this perspective. It examines human beings as embodied, relational, meaning-making, and developable processes rather than as fixed or self-contained entities.
The second part, Society, considers the social conditions within which human becoming occurs. It analyses relationships, power, inequality, culture, narratives, emotions, knowledge, conflict, and ecological interdependence. It shows how societies enlarge or restrict the developmental possibilities available to individuals and groups.
The third part, Institutional Translation, connects these anthropological and social insights to institutional design. It develops criteria for evaluating institutions according to basic security, equal worth, autonomy, correctability, epistemic quality, and ecological responsibility. Institutions are approached not merely as systems of rules or control, but as structures that create and distribute the conditions for human development.
The fourth part, Democracy Redesigned, examines the democratic constitutional state under conditions of globalization, technological power, social inequality, epistemic fragmentation, and ecological pressure. It explores how representation, fundamental rights, judicial protection, citizen participation, deliberation, countervailing power, expertise, and long-term responsibility can be strengthened and connected.
The fifth part, The Polycentric and Correctable Model of Democracy, brings these elements together. It proposes a democratic order in which authority is distributed across multiple institutions and levels, different sources of legitimacy complement one another, knowledge remains plural and contestable, and decisions are systematically open to evaluation and revision.
Correctability occupies a central place throughout the five parts. Institutions cannot prevent every mistake, injustice, or unintended consequence. They can, however, be designed to identify failures, hear those affected, incorporate new knowledge, revise decisions, repair harm, and learn from experience. A resilient democratic order is therefore not one that assumes itself to be flawless, but one that possesses the capacity and willingness to correct itself.
The proposals developed in this book do not constitute a fixed institutional blueprint. Such a blueprint would conflict with the recognition that human beings and societies develop under conditions of uncertainty, incomplete knowledge, historical contingency, and legitimate disagreement. The framework is instead offered as an open and revisable research and reform program: coherent enough to provide direction, but provisional enough to remain responsive to evidence, experience, criticism, and changing circumstances.
Artificial intelligence models were used during the research, editorial, and translation stages of this book. During the research process, AI models assisted in identifying relevant themes, mapping connections between disciplines, organizing questions, comparing conceptual approaches, and locating possible lines of further inquiry. Their suggestions were treated as provisional research leads rather than as authoritative evidence. The use of these tools did not determine the book’s substantive arguments, normative positions, institutional proposals, or final wording. Explicitly acknowledging the use of AI is intended to provide transparency about the working process and to reflect the principles of accountability and correctability that the book advocates for institutions more generally.
Although this book is informed by professional experience with law, legislation, government, and public administration, it was written in a personal capacity. The arguments and conclusions expressed here represent solely the views of the author and should not be attributed to any institution, employer, or public authority.
The questions explored are nevertheless public questions. They concern how power is exercised, how rights are protected, how social risks and opportunities are distributed, how knowledge acquires authority, how citizens participate, and how present decisions affect future generations. These questions belong not to one profession, discipline, or institution, but to society as a whole.
Readers need not accept every argument or proposal to engage with the central inquiry. The framework is intended to support disagreement as well as agreement. Its value lies partly in connecting fields that are often separated, making assumptions visible, exposing tensions, and creating a language through which institutional choices can be examined more openly.
This concise English edition is offered as an invitation to that wider conversation. It does not present the final word on humanity, democracy, or institutional justice. It presents a direction: toward institutions that protect human dignity, make power visible and contestable, learn from failure, respect pluralism, and preserve the social and ecological conditions for human development.
If human beings are continually becoming, then the societies and institutions through which they live together must remain capable of becoming as well.
Would you like to explore how a relational understanding of humanity can transform democracy, law, the economy, and public institutions? Click the link below to read the full book, Becoming Human Together, and discover a new framework for building a more humane, democratic, and correctable society within ecological limits.
[1] Lindblom, “The Science of ‘Muddling Through’”; Ostrom, “Beyond Markets and States.” Incrementalism is not always sufficient where delay creates irreversible harm or entrenches injustice.
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