The Moral Dimension of Lifelong Learning

Abstract

A key aspect of contemporary lifelong learning theory, policy, and practice is the idea that, because of rapid changes in contemporary societies, there is a constant need for individuals to learn new knowledge and skills in order to adapt themselves to changing conditions. There is, therefore, an increased emphasis on the personal dimension of lifelong learning and on the need to reflexively engage in the (re)construction of one’s self and identity. We can find this, for example, in Anthony Giddens’s idea of the “reflexive project of the self.” The authors argue that this idea is too individualistic and lacks recognition of the moral dimension of self-formation. It therefore not only leads to an impoverished conception of the self but also to an impoverished view of the role of learning in this process. The authors present ideas from Charles Taylor on self and identity to show the role that moral and intersubjective dimensions play in the formation of self and identity. The authors argue that Taylor’s work points to a different form of lifelong learning in late-modernity, one that is more explicitly concerned with the moral dimension of lifelong learning and adult education.

Keywords

self identity lifelong learning adult education morality intersubjectivity late-modernity

In order to have a sense of who we are, we have to have a notion of how we have become and of where we are going.

—Taylor (1989, p. 47)

In this article, we compare the work of Anthony Giddens and Charles Taylor with regard to their understandings of the interrelationships between self, identity, and learning. Although both authors argue that processes of modernization have turned the self from a “given” into a “task” or “project,” they have significantly different views about how this “task” should be conceived and what learning has to do with it. One important difference concerns the moral aspects of the formation of self and identity. Comparing Giddens and Taylor not only shows why the moral dimension matters but also provides suggestions for forms of lifelong learning that wish to pay more explicit attention to the moral dimensions of the formation of the self in late-modernity.

In recent years, there has been a growing interest within the field of adult education and lifelong learning in questions of learning that concern the self and identity, both at a theoretical level (e.g., Edwards, Ranson, & Strain, 2002.; Fejes & Nicoll, 2008; Tennant, 1998) and in empirical work (e.g., Billett & Pavlova, 2005; Chappell, Rhodes, Solomon, Tenannt, & Yates., 2003; Illeris, 2003; Lawy & Bloomer, 2003; Tennant & Yates, 2005). Such interest is not totally new. In the 1972 UNESCO report Learning To Be (Faure et al., 1972), we can already find a notion of lifelong learning orientated toward

the complete fulfillment of man [sic], in all the richness of his personality, the complexity of his forms of expression and his various commitments—as individual, member of a family and a community, citizen and producer, inventor of techniques and creative dreamer. (p. vi)

Here the aim of lifelong education is articulated as to “enable man to be himself,” to “become himself” (Faure et al., 1972, p. xxxi). The current interest in the relationships between lifelong learning, identity, and the self partly has to be understood against the background of rapid social and economic changes taking place around the globe. Such changes have led to an emphasis, at least within policy discourse, on modes of lifelong learning that facilitate adaptation to changing socioeconomic conditions. The demand for a reflexive work force is supposed to be brought about by autonomous learners fostered by a learning society. The rapid and continual sociocultural changes brought about by globalization are also supposed to have a significant impact on a personal level, particularly with regard to questions of one’s identity and sense of self. In this context, the formation of identity has increasingly been seen as a learning process and, more important, as a lifelong learning process.

These developments help explain the growing interest of researchers in the fields of adult education and lifelong learning in questions about identity and the self. Edwards (1997) has provided a detailed analysis of current societal requirements imposed on individuals to engage in forms of learning in order to maintain a “flexible identity” and “flexible subjectivity” (see also Edwards, Nicoll, & Lee, 2002); Tennant (1998) has presented a profound critique of adult education as a “technology of the self.” Chappell et al. (2003) view identity as narrative and relate this to pedagogy, enabling a discussion of pedagogy that draws attention to its cultural and political dimensions. Pedagogy in this sense then invokes the potential for reflexivity to be bought into the processes through which pedagogy changes identity. Research in this area accommodates a myriad perspectives, including liberal humanism (e.g., Mezirow, 1991; Rogers, 1986), critical theory (e.g., Freire, 1994), psychoanalysis (e.g., West, 2004), and postmodern views (e.g., Fejes & Nicoll, 2008; Tennant, 1998; Usher, 1989). All these studies can be seen as the signs of the growing interest in questions of self and identity in theories and practices of adult education and lifelong learning.

One of the noticeable features of this work is that many authors seem to assume that the involvement of adult education and lifelong learning in the formation of self and identity should be understood in terms of the idea of reflexivity, that is, through processes in which the self “works” on itself, through thinking and action. They frequently associate their studies with the notion of reflexivity that can be found in the sociological analyses of modernization and late-modernity, particularly as articulated by Anthony Giddens and Ulrich Beck. Both Giddens and Beck emphasize reflexivity as a central aspect of contemporary changes. Giddens’s notion of “reflexivity” is frequently employed as an analytical tool and/or a theoretical framework in the field of lifelong learning (e.g., Belanger, 1994; Edwards, Nicoll, et al., 2002; Field, 2000; Hake, 1998, 1999; Payne, 2001; Schemmann, 2002). As Hake (1998) states,

Giddens’s discussion of the structural necessity of reflexivity provides one way of understanding why learning is a permanent feature of social life in late modern societies. His case is that globalization, de-traditionalization and institutionalized reflexivity lead to the centrality of learning in all social relations. Reflexivity and learning become inherent to all forms of social interaction; learning comes to pervade all of society. Late modern societies are typified by learning challenges and necessity of lifelong learning as a structural characteristic. (p. 35)

Likewise, referring to Giddens’s ideas (1990, 1991), Payne (2001) claims that “lifelong learning is a characteristic way within reflexive modernity whereby both individuals and organizations can re-orientate themselves in the face of the frequent crises produced by the ‘juggernaut of change’” (p. 379).

Our focus in this article, however, is on reflexivity not at a structural level but at an individual level (although the two are not entirely unconnected). In what follows, we discuss Giddens’s notion of the “reflexive project of the self” in relation to adult education and lifelong learning. Giddens (1991) describes the reflexive project of the self as “the process whereby self-identity is constituted by the reflexive ordering of self-narrative” (p. 244). This should be distinguished from Giddens’s notion of institutional reflexivity, which refers to the regularized use of knowledge about circumstances of social life as a constitutive element in its organization and transformation. The ideas contained in this notion have been widely regarded as providing support for the idea that late-modern societies require a new kind of lifelong learning that is concerned with the ongoing reflexive construction of the self in response to ongoing uncertainty and risk. Hake (1998) argues, for example, that “(a) corollary of organizational reflexivity is intentional learning as a vehicle for ‘individual reflexive modernization’ . . . Individuals increasingly have to assume personal responsibility for formulating their identities and life courses” (p. 39). Similarly, Field (2000) has argued that “our informal learning now tries to deal, however unsatisfactorily, with fundamental questions of our individual identity and intimate relations . . . these have now become defining characteristics of our way of life” (p. 67). Edwards & Nicoll, et al. (2002) have also suggested that Giddens’s notion of the reflexive monitoring of the self suggests a mode of lifelong learning that involves personal development opportunities (p. 200). They argue that the goal of “flexible learning” in the contemporary world of learning, work, and social life is “greater flexibility within the economy and society, associated with a requirement for an identity as a reflexive project” (p. 202). We can find similar ideas in Illeris (2003), Chappell et al. (2003), Ecclestone, Haynes, and Furedi (2005), to name but a few. All this suggests that Giddens’s notion of the “reflexive project of the self” provides us with a rationale for a view of lifelong learning in late-modern societies that focuses on the personal dimension of lifelong learning—a mode of reflexive learning that has to do with self and identity. As Edwards, Ranson, et al. (2002) contend,

Implicit here is a view that the reflexivity associated with contemporary change processes entails forms of learning that develop a capacity for questioning one’s self and the historical and social circumstances from which action to accomplish change may be envisioned and resourced. (p. 531)

Another thinker who has argued that we should see the self as a kind of “project” is Charles Taylor (Taylor, 1989, 1991, p. 53). Taylor’s ideas have, however, gained far less attention in the field of adult education and lifelong learning and more specifically in the discussions around the interrelationships between self, identity, and learning. In his key-text Sources of the Self (Taylor, 1989), Taylor presents the self as a project in terms of life as a whole, something he encapsulates in the following statement: “In order to have a sense of who we are, we have to have a notion of how we have become and of where we are going” (p. 47). Giddens and Taylor agree that self and identity have become problematic in late-modernity. They argue that to make sense of ourselves under conditions of late-modernity, we need to actively and reflexively engage with our identity. Also, they both stress that the act of narrating one’s life may have a role to play in this process. They differ, however, over the extent to which there is and ought to be an intersubjective or social dimension in the ways in which we reflexively “make” ourselves and our identities and also over the question of whether or not the ways in which we reflexively “make” ourselves and our identities have or ought to have a moral dimension. In what follows, we discuss the work of Giddens and Taylor with regard to questions concerning the reflexive construction of identity and the self, highlight differences between their views, and articulate—with Taylor—what the implications for adult education and lifelong learning might be if we follow Taylor in his insistence on the importance of the intersubjective and, most important, the moral dimension of identity and the self.

The “Reflexive Project of the Self” Reconsidered

In his book Modernity and Self-Identity, Giddens (1991) has claimed that in the context of the posttraditional order of late-modern societies, “the self becomes a reflexive project” (p. 32). According to Giddens, this is not simply an option, that is, something that individuals can decide to engage with or not. He takes the stronger view that in late-modern societies the self “has to be reflexively made” (p. 3, italics added). Self-identity appears to be something “that has to be routinely created and sustained in the reflexive activities of the individual” (p. 52). The reason why the self has to be reflexively made is that late-modern societies no longer provide stable “anchor points” for the self. According to Giddens, the reflexivity that is considered to be characteristic of such societies—see above—“extends into the core of the self” (p. 32). Society and the self are both “in flux,” and “the altered self has to be explored and constructed as part of a reflexive process of connecting personal and social change” (p. 33). So, for Giddens, identity can no longer be seen as “something that is just given” but has to be understood as a task or “project” or a reflexively made narrative. Giddens argues that the reflexive construction of the self is necessary to keep the anxieties caused (by rapid social changes) at bay. The reflexive construction of the self is, in other words, seen as a particular response to and way to cope with the ongoing uncertainties of rapid social change.

There are two assumptions in Giddens’s view about identity and the self that we wish to discuss in more detail. One has to do with the individualistic character of Giddens’s notion of the self and the other with what we will refer to as the moral “deficit” in this idea.

The Individualistic Character of Giddens’s Conception of the Self

Giddens (1991) presents the “reflexive project of the self” as a highly individualistic process, that is, of individuals working on themselves. This becomes particularly visible in Giddens’s insistence that the self does not operate with reference to external criteria but that the reflexive construction of the self is exclusively guided by what he refers to as an internally referential system, a set of internal criteria the self uses for its development and fulfillment based on the individual’s own life-planning. For Giddens, individuals only use something “true” to themselves to control and master their future. He argues that “the key reference points are set ‘from the inside’, in terms of how the individual constructs/reconstructs his life history” (p. 80).

The individualistic character of the self is particularly evident in Giddens’s emphasis on human agency. On the one hand, Giddens argues that in a world that is constantly changing individuals need to change themselves in order to adapt to changing conditions. Giddens (1991) claims that “the social conventions produced and reproduced in our day-to-day activities are reflexively monitored by the agent as part of ‘going on’ in the variegated settings of our lives” (p. 35). On the other hand, Giddens depicts modernity as a process of the constant breaking with traditions in an onward drive to develop “the new.” At an individual level, anxiety thus helps to “mobilize adaptive responses and novel initiatives” (p. 13). This means that individuals not only need agency to adapt themselves to a constantly changing world but also require a more active agency for self-actualization and self-innovation. Thus, Giddens’s conception of the self seems to posit a hyperindividualism with a high degree of agency.

This point of critique has also been expressed by Elliott (2001), who remarks that

there is a difficulty with the almost excessive emphasis that Giddens places on the tacit knowledge and self-understanding of social agents—excessive since it threatens to break the link with issues of social power and political domination that Giddens recognizes in his writings elsewhere. (p. 40)

Côté and Levine (2002) also comment that, for Giddens,

under conditions of late modernity it becomes important for individual to develop “agentic” capacities with which to construct reality and act in the world. . . . He described this individual as an “intelligent strategist” (Giddens, 1994, p. 7) in learning to deal with the abstract dimensions of “place” and “space” in the late modern world. (p. 43)

Giddens’s notion of the “reflexive project of the self” seems to assume that everyone in late-modern societies is able to have a high level of individual agency as a response to changes.

The Moral Deficit of Giddens’s Conception of the Self

The other thing we wish to highlight has to do with the moral dimensions of the construction of self-identity. Giddens (1991) seems to assume that the conditions of late-modernity are incompatible with cultural/traditional moralities. He argues that because traditional morality has lost its authority so that there are no longer stable anchor points but only a confusing plurality of moral frameworks, individuals can ultimately only trust themselves. This is why he argues that the reference points for the construction of the self have to be set “from the inside,” in terms of one’s “reflexive ordering of self-narrative” (p. 244). For Giddens, the emergence of an internally referential system of knowledge and power is the result of the “evaporation of morality” (p. 145), which is why he believes that the “first loyalty” of the individuals reflexively turns to the self. The only morality underpinning this is a morality of authenticity, that is, a morality of being true to oneself (p. 78).

In Giddens’s (1991) understanding, inner authenticity is “a framework of basic trust by means of which the lifespan can be understood as a unity against the backdrop of shifting social events” (p. 215). Authenticity “substitutes for dignity: what makes an action good is that it is authentic to the individual’s desires, and can be displayed to others as such” (p. 170). Based on the inner authenticity, an individual’s lifespan then becomes “freed from externalities associated with pre-established ties to other individuals and groups” (p. 147). Authenticity underpins Giddens’s notion of self-actualization that is motivated by a form of individualism and the freedom of choice of indefinite possibilities in terms of self-creation, lifestyle, and life-planning in late-modern societies. The question this raises is whether the formation of self and identity can and should indeed be understood as entirely driven from the inside and entirely informed by a notion of authenticity or whether the formation of self and identity, while ultimately an individual achievement, should be understood as a process that always occurs in relation to others and also always with reference to a plurality of moral orientations. We will return to these questions below, but now first make some critical observations with regard to Giddens’s ideas.

Critical Observations

Our first observation concerns the empirical adequacy of Giddens’s depiction of the self. Although it could well be the case that in certain context we do find individuals who are highly agentically and highly individualistically engaged in the formation of their identities, it is difficult to imagine that this is universally true. When we look at empirical research on adult education, lifelong learning, and the self, we actually find many accounts that do not depict the individual as just involved in internally driven self-actualization. Illeris (2003) has shown, for example, that in the case of Denmark “the majority of adults enter the learning programs because they are more or less forced to do so” because of the threat of unemployment and not because of motivation, interest, or agency so that “in practice, they typically develop a variety of psychological defense strategies to avoid learning that challenges their identity and personal ways of thinking, reacting and behaving” (p. 13). More noticeably, rather than echoing the wider emergence of agentic and reflexive learning concerning (trans)formation of one’s identity as what Giddens suggests, Ecclestone et al. (2005) warn that a therapeutic ethos based on the notion of “diminished subjectivity” (Furedi, 1999) is resulting in new forms of professional intervention in adult education. As for the idea of a more general “evaporation of morality” in society, we may want to look at Asian countries such as Japan, Singapore, and, increasingly, China, which seem to provide evidence that morality inherent in tradition can well have a place within late-modern societies.

Apart from the empirical inadequacy regarding the idea of the “reflexive project of the self,” we also have to ask where this idea might lead us to. We have a number of concerns. First, the “reflexive project of the self” seems to entail a mode of self-directed or self-managed learning in which others are only needed to fulfill the needs of the “sovereign self.” Selves seem to be unencumbered in actualizing themselves. But are we indeed entirely free in designing who we are and who we desire to be, without any reference to the relationship with (significant) others, moral norms, and cultural and political dimensions? Do we indeed possess total control over the formation of our identity? And is the learning involved indeed entirely individualistic, that is, disconnected from any need for guidance, teaching, counseling, facilitating, questioning, or dialogue?

Our second concern has to do with the motivation for learning. There seem to be two kinds of autonomy enmeshed in the notion of the reflexive project of the self that are relevant for the question of motivation for learning. One is orientated toward adaptation to social demands, that is, learning for controlling one’s existence according to the needs of ever-changing societal conditions; the other is for self-actualization, that is, learning for asserting oneself. Giddens fails to highlight this difference and seems to neglect a phenomenon that in today’s social settings there is a “yawing gap” between the right of self-assertion on the one hand and the capacity “to control the social settings which render such self-assertion feasible” on the other (see Bauman, 2000, p. 38).

Third, although Giddens (1991) does acknowledge the plurality of moral values, he assumes that authenticity is the preeminent moral value for individuals in the formation of their selves and identities, a process he tends to understand in terms of self-actualization (p. 9). He claims, “In so far as it is dominated by the core perspectives of modernity, the project of the self remains one of control, guided only by a morality of ‘authenticity’” (p. 225). But whether this is true or not is an empirical question rather than something that can just be proclaimed. It not only runs the risk of being detrimental with regard to individuals’ ties with others and to the commitment to a community but also underestimates the impact of the plurality of moral values characteristic of late-modern society. What is left out of the picture, in other words, is how individuals cope with the tensions between traditional morality and modernity.

Fourth, Giddens presents us with a picture of the self as constantly engaged in adaptation to eternally changing social circumstances. Individuals appear to have no alternative but to change themselves in order to adapt to changing settings. The question is whether this depiction of the individual as flexible and constantly adaptive is a desirable way of understanding the individual in late-modern societies. Here we can think, for example, of Sennett’s idea that the adaptive and flexible self may actually be an expression of the “corrosion of personal character” (see Sennett, 1999) and thus of the decay of moral identity. Sennett worries about how we decide what is of lasting value in ourselves in our current society, a society that is impatient and focuses on the immediate moment.

Finally, given its emphasis of adaptation to the change, Giddens’s conception of the self also suggests the self as continuously choosing what to do and who to be with, constantly focusing on the emergence of “the new,” with less attention to the maintenance of one’s past. It understates the role of keeping a longer-term goal as an end in guiding one’s choice of action and depicts the self as completely disconnected from tradition, culture, and history. This raises questions about the extent to which individuals need some degree of constancy or sameness of the self over time in order to have a sense of direction in life and to have a basis for orientation against the backdrop of “life as a whole.”

Although Giddens’s ideas do reflect certain aspects of the reality of self and identity in late-modern age, and although those ideas are frequently used in the field of adult education and lifelong learning, the above analyses show they are not without problems.

Charles Taylor on Self and Identity

Like Giddens, Charles Taylor also regards the self as a sort of project and highlights the importance of reflexivity in it, but he reveals different dimensions of the formation of identity, emphasizing intersubjective and relational dimensions and, most important, a moral dimension.

The Self in the “Web of Interlocution”

In contrast to Giddens’s depiction of an individualistic self, one crucial idea in Taylor’s approach is the recognition that “one is a self only among other selves” (Taylor, 1989, p. 35). He calls this a “self among interlocutors” (p. 29) or a “dialogical self” (Taylor, 1995b, p. 230). Thus, Taylor (1989) maintains that a self exists within “webs of interlocution” (p. 36) and that self-understanding requires a language. “(T)hings have significance for me, and the issue of my identity is worked out, only through a language of interpretation” (p. 34). The language used by individuals is, however, not something invented by them. Taylor emphasizes that we define our identity through our acquisition of rich human languages of expression in exchanges with others, especially significant others—those who matter to us. These significant others are certain “interlocutors who are essential to me achieving my self-definition and who are now critical to my continuing grasp of language of self-understanding, and my relationship to both can overlap” (p. 36). Language here is used in a broad sense, meaning not only words we speak but also the “language” of norms, of gesture, of age, of a community, of a tradition, of a culture, and the like (p. 35). These languages of expression are also the languages of strong evaluation that enable us to become full human agents, understand ourselves, define and discover our identity.

The Self in “Moral Space”

For Taylor, there is always a “moral space” in the human world, so the self fundamentally exists in a “moral space,” which means that the coordinates of self-identity are fundamentally moral. As Taylor, (1989) argues,

To know who you are is to be oriented in moral space, a space in which questions arise about what is good or bad, what is worth doing and what not, what has meaning and importance for you and what is trivial and secondary. (p. 28)

Comparatively speaking, morality could be seen as being about rationalistic rules and universalizable codes of conduct that should govern other-regarding actions, whereas ethics is concerned with questions about self, meaning and fulfillment in life, and can be defined for personal conduct as the conception of a “good life” with and for others. The former is about “what is right to do,” and the latter is about “what is good to be.” However, Taylor (1989) does not use this distinction, as he believes that both involve the operation of strong evaluation, and he uses the notion of “morality” to embrace the two meanings (p. 14). Strong evaluation involves “discriminations of right or wrong, better or worse, higher or lower, which are not rendered valid by our own desires, inclinations, or choices, but rather stand independent of these and offer standards by which they can be judged” (p. 4). Strong evaluation thus concerns the question of the kind of life one wants to live and who one wants to be. For Taylor, strong evaluation is a universal human feature and is acquired by an individual’s internalization of culture and norms brought by (significant) others. It “plays the role of orienting us, of providing the frame within which things have meaning for us, by virtue of the qualitative distinctions it incorporates” (p. 30). Identity thus can be understood in terms of the horizon “within which I know where I stand, and what meanings things have for us” (p. 29). Without a moral framework or horizon we will suffer disorientation, an identity crisis (p. 30).

There is also a dimension of direction in terms of one’s relationship to a certain moral good, that is, one’s going toward or away vis-à-vis a certain good; near or far to a certain good. This has to do with the self as a project: “I don’t define an identity for ‘me in 1991,’ but rather try to give meaning to my life as it has been and as I project it further on the basis of what it has been” (Taylor, 1991, p. 53). This encapsulates the idea that self-identity needs certain sameness and consistence of a self over time. The directional dimension also entails a temporal (lifelong) project of “life as a whole” in terms of consistent life purposes. Taylor further argues that to discover and live up to the strongly valued meanings of one’s life and identity, one can articulate one’s moral assumptions. This is why for Taylor the notion of narrative is relevant to self and identity.

Taylor (1991) argues against an individualistic understanding of authenticity, though he acknowledges that authenticity is a moral facet of the modern form of individualism, as it involves creation, construction, discovery, originality, and even possible opposition to social and moral norms. But he emphasizes that authenticity also supposes demands from beyond the self, that is, it “requires (i) openness to horizons of significance (for otherwise the creation loses the background that can save it from insignificance) and (ii) a self-definition in dialogue” (p. 66). The demands involved in authenticity are in tension, but it is wrong, so Taylor argues, to consider one superior to the other. The idea of horizons of significance can be seen as the background against which things take on significance for us. It is a horizon “whereby some things are worthwhile and others less so, and still others not at all, quite anterior to choice” (p. 38), which means that the idea of horizons of significance has something to do with our assumptions in terms of strong evaluations. Taylor exemplifies the horizon of significance in terms of world in which history, the demands of nature, the needs of my fellow human beings, the duties of citizenship, the call of God, or something else of this order matter crucially. Without such a horizon, it is impossible for us to define ourselves significantly. As he writes, “I can define my identity only against the background of things that matter” (p. 41).

Self, Identity, and the Moral Dimension of Lifelong Learning

It could be argued that Giddens and Taylor just focus on different dimensions; hence, there is no need to privilege one over the other. But the question is what those divergences mean and how we should respond to them. Although Giddens’s analyses are popular in the field, he seems to overemphasize the impact of social dynamics on the self and to overestimate individuals’ agency to deal with this impact. The normative analysis of moral values vis-à-vis self-identity is also insufficient. This may be partly because Giddens holds a functionalist view of identity (see Côté & Levin, 2002) and partly because he tends to assume that individuals will respond in a rational manner to the proliferation of information available in the late modern age (see also Edwards & Usher, 1999). This helps explain why for Giddens reflexive learning concerning self and identity tends to be adaptive, functional, and instrumental—features that actually suit dominant policy on lifelong learning quite well (see, e.g., Bagnall, 2000; Biesta, 2006; Edwards & Ranson, et al., 2002; Strain, 1998).

Although Taylor’s notion of the self is not without problems—there is, for example, a danger that by relying too much on tradition the individual’s agency runs the risk of remaining rather “thin”—he does paint a more rounded and more situated picture of the formation of self and identity, one that is not just driven from the inside-out, so to speak, but where the formation of self and identity is socially situated and morally related. This suggests a different “agenda” for adult education and lifelong learning, one in which there is explicit attention to the intersubjective and moral dimensions of the formation of self and identity. The plurality of life-options that is characteristic of late-modern societies is, after all, not just a matter of (rational) choice but also raises deeper questions about the kind of self we may wish to cultivate in light of a plurality of options and visions. This is not just a matter of choice but touches on questions about what our lives mean to us and how we want them to mean and be significant. They thus touch on values and meanings vis-à-vis an individual’s existence, which direct us to the moral dimension of lifelong learning. Given that the dominant language of the learning society is dominated by questions concerning economic growth, instrumental rationality, and scientific and technological knowledge/skills, the question we wish to ask is where such a learning society will take us, not just at the level of society as a whole but also with regard to each of us individually. What, in other words, are the moral reference points for a learning society; reference points that not only can guide us in the formation of self and identity, but particularly in the way in which the formation of our self and identity is related to that of others. This evokes a call for a place for moral knowledge both at a social level and at an individual level and calls for a moral imperative in lifelong learning (see Biesta, 2006; Jarvis, 2006).

What is more, identity is a phenomenon that emerges from the interplay between individual and society (see, e.g., Berger & Luckmann, 1976). That is, although identity is partly shaped by social structure, it also reacts on a given social structure, maintaining it, modifying it, or even reshaping it. It is then plausible to assert that moral identity could be a normative mediator in the dialectic between the individual and society. It is in this dialectic process that we can see an important role for the moral dimension of self-identity in the collective effort for a good society. As Strain (1998) has pointed out:

Exercising individual autonomy requires space for the formation and exercise of moral identity, through play, creativity and a pari passu growth of affective and cognitive capabilities. These dimensions of the learning process support the kinds of learning by which the very components and structure of economic growth and social development may be transformed. A learning society which ignores them risks abandoning its own premise of a society autonomously reconstituting itself and redistributing life-chances. (p. 276)

Discussion and Implications

Given the moral weight inherent in Taylor’s conception of the self, we are interested in finding out how his ideas can contribute to adult education and lifelong learning in relation to identity and the self. We wish to make three points.

The Dialogical Self in a Moral Framework

Taylor (1991) clearly emphasizes that it is impossible to define our identity through solitary and isolated reflection.

We define our identity always in dialogue with, sometimes in struggle against, the identities our significant others want to recognize in us. And even when we outgrow some of the latter—our parents, for instance—and they disappear from our lives, the conversation with them continues within us as long as we live. (p. 33)

This suggests an entirely different dynamic of reflexive learning concerning the self from what we have seen in Giddens. Taylor is, of course, not the first one who stresses the intersubjective dimension in the formation of self as similar views can be found in sociology and social psychology (e.g., Mead, 1934/1972). Particularly, from a sociological perspective, Berger and Luckmann (1976) have also stressed that significant others occupy a central position “for the ongoing confirmation of that crucial element of reality we call identity,” including the “emotionally charged confirmation” that significant others like parents bestow on an individual from his/her childhood (p. 170). The realities given by one’s significant others are internalized by a child and firmly entrenched in his/her consciousness. However, what differentiates Taylor’s theories from others is his case for the role of morality in the “dialogical self,” showing that individuals acquire evaluative languages of expression in a “moral space.” He argues that a fundamental moral orientation is essential to being a human interlocutor, one who is capable of answering for oneself the question of “who” in the web of interlocution (Taylor, 1989, p. 29). The “self” exists in both domains at once.

All this suggests that reflexive learning that is relevant to the formation of self and identity should not be understood as a reflexivity where the self simply works on itself; it involves a process of intersubjective dialogue and negotiation that inescapably involves evaluative language. Adult education may have a role to play in this process precisely as it can bring in intersubjective and dialogical aspects and methods.

Articulation

Taylor (1985) argues that “(t)o give a certain articulation is to shape our sense of what we desire or what we hold important in a certain way” (p. 36). This notion of articulation of moral frameworks and how they “operate” in the formation of self and identity can be understood as a reflexive learning process. Referring to Taylor’s theories, Edwards & Ranson, et al. (2002) have revealed the role of interpretative and evaluative schema in reflexive learning during which consciousness transforms action. Joas (2000) contends that Taylor’s theory of self and morality can be seen as a hermeneutic cycle in which people move between their feelings, their interpretations of them, and their articulation of them. Jarvis (2006) argues that this cycle is a reflexive process. In individuals’ articulating their feelings, they can also modify their values and produce new ones.

In our analysis, there are two senses of learning at stake in the processes of articulation. First, the process of articulation can be seen as a way of conducting an examination of one’s life akin to the Socratic maxim that an unexamined life is not worth living. It clarifies and deepens our understanding of moral values by discovering what underpins them, thereby enabling us to acquire a different and in a certain sense deeper self-knowledge imbued with cultures, norms, traditions, history, and morality (see Taylor, 1989). As a result of this process of articulation, implicit moral assumptions are turned into explicit ones and/or a new and different understanding of the meaning of life and self might emerge. Second, Taylor (1989) contends that articulation of a constitutive good as a moral source can move people toward that good and empower them to live up to that good. The constitutive good “is a moral source . . . a something the love of which empowers us to do and be good” (p. 93). Articulation as a formulation “has power when it brings the source close, when it makes it plain and evident, in all its inherent force, its capacity to inspire our love, respect, or allegiance” (p. 96). This suggests that articulating one’s constitutive good is a process of autonomous learning that empowers people to live up to the particular good they strongly aspire to be in contact with for “life as a whole” rather than being “driven” by anxieties caused by social changes.

An effective articulation releases its force of inspiring our love of the good, and this is how “words have power” (Taylor, 1989, p. 96). Narrative as a cultural symbol for articulation comes in here. Narrative hence becomes an approach to making sense of one’s moral identity. Although some academics (e.g., Chappell et al., 2003) focus on the cultural and political dimensions of narrative rather than on the moral dimension of narrative, they share the idea of narrative identity in Taylor’s analysis. Clark and Rossiter (2008) have argued that “narrative is not only a method for fostering learning; it is also a way to conceptualize the learning process” (p. 61; see also Goodson, Biesta, Tedder, & Adair, 2010). What can be seen here is that narrative is not only a way of developing learning concerning self-identity but also a conceptual structure to present such a learning process. The methodological implications for research into self and identity by using narrative/biographical approaches are also evident here (see e.g., Alheit & Dausien, 2002; Antikainen, 1998; Goodson et al., 2010). At a practical level, when people articulate their moral framework through narrative, they are learning in the sense that they are reflecting, evaluating, judging, interpreting, creating, and even transforming themselves.

Multiple Moral Frameworks and Authenticity

Although the conception of lifelong learning implied in Giddens’s notion of the “reflexive project of the self” has its origin in modern Western values, it seems to be held as almost universal nowadays (see Künzel, 2003). Although Taylor agrees with Giddens about the plural nature that characterizes late-modern societies, he does not see this as leading to the “evaporation of morality” or the disappearance of traditions. Moreover, he does not regard “authenticity” as the only criterion to guide the making of self-identity. Rather, he sees plurality as a different context for moral orientation, one that does put the individuals in a more active role in using their practical wisdom and capacities for invention through dialogue against the horizon of significance.

Since Taylor (1989) suggests that the morality of “authenticity” is just one moral framework in today’s Western society among many, this indicates that there is learning to be done in relation to what he refers to as the invention of the meaning of one’s life in an age of plurality. This is a process that has to do with selection, unique combination, evaluation, and judgment of the variety of moral frameworks available in modern society. This process entails Taylor’s perspective of authenticity, which suggests that reflexive learning concerning self and identity not only follows one’s inner desires but also demands external criteria. He argues that our identity is largely defined by our “strong evaluations,” which themselves are underpinned by implicit or explicit moral horizons, which are independent of our “true” desires and choices and by which those desires and choices can be judged. This suggests that our strong evaluations not only define who we are but also play an important role in orienting and judging us in who we authentically desire to be against the background of horizons of significance, even in the sense of self-creation and self-actualization. Likewise, Chappell et al. (2003) have argued that identity, rather than simply being a reflexively constructed “self-narrative,” must need relational reference to “ontological narrative” (p. 55), that is, culturally and socially available narratives that are not of an own individual’s making, a background in which practices of pedagogy can be examined.

If the notion of authenticity entails dialogical dimensions and horizons of significance defined by strong evaluations and if one’s identity is also defined by one’s strong evaluations, then to find or maintain an authentic identity involves deliberation of one’s strong evaluations as value judgments, that is, judgments not only “about the quality of the kind of being we are or want to be” (Taylor, 1985, p. 26) but also about how to behave or what to do in light of horizons of significance (see also Taylor, 1995a). This type of judgment is akin to the judgment “about what is to be done” that is needed for practical wisdom (phronesis) in the Aristotelian sense. Since authentic identity can be seen as living toward a certain good as its end and acting with regard to that good, and since practical wisdom is “a reasoned and true state of capacity to act with regard to human goods” (Aristotle, 1941, p. 1027), then authentic identity is clearly linked with practical wisdom. To judge about “what is to be done,” one needs to have understanding because Aristotle argues that understanding judges (see p. 1032). Aristotle regards this type of understanding as learning when it means the exercise of a faculty of opinion for practical wisdom. Put differently, what is needed for our judgment “about what is to be done” is phronetic understanding. Thus, it could be argued that the exercises one’s capacity that forms opinions is a reflexive learning process, which could be called learning as understanding.

Facing the plurality of moral values in late-modern settings, an individual has to choose as to “who to be” and about “what is to be done.” Thus, the use of practical wisdom seems to be particularly important in a society with a plurality of values. Learning as understanding in terms of judging in the sense mentioned above involves both creative learning and communicative learning. Creative learning does not simply mean learning to produce “the new,” because “creativity is also related to both the courage to be critical and the endurance in wrestling with facts and arguments” (Van der Veen, 2006, p. 238). Thus, practical reasoning about the variety of moral frameworks can be conceived as a dimension of creative learning in, through, and by conversation and/or dialogue, since new and different opinion could be a “learning outcome” emerged from comparative argument and deliberation.

Considering the question how people ought to live together involves exploring shared values and making a collective effort for social reformation. This is why there is a need to put horizons of significance, in this case, democracy and citizenship, into the learning that is concerned with self and identity. Such reflexive learning requires communicative learning, because “participants can enter a discussion of underlying values and norms of system policies” (Van der Veen, 2006, p. 237). This could be seen as a process of practical reasoning at the collective level, that is, where there are choices that people face together, and where decisions have to be made about “what is to be done for us.” This is an important space for adult education to operate.

Conclusion

We have shown how Giddens’s notion of the reflexive project of the self has influenced the field of adult education and lifelong learning, and we have presented a critical analysis of this notion, highlighting the individualistic nature of Giddens’s notion of the self and the fact that it seems to lack a moral orientation. Whereas Giddens’s depiction of the condition of the self in late-modern societies may appear plausible, further inspection of his views indicates that he operates with rather specific assumptions about the self—assumptions that are not merely descriptive or factual but also seem to imply a normative view about what a desirable way of leading one’s life in late-modern societies is. He thus seems to suggest that there is only one “template” for what a late-modern society might look like and only one mode of learning that might support the formation of self and identity in such societies.

Taylor’s work highlights the moral dimension in the formation of self and identity by highlighting the role of moral orientations in guiding us toward certain moral good(s), which, in turn, contribute to the formation of who we are and where we stand. His notion of the “dialogical self” demonstrates how we make sense of ourselves in intersubjective relationships. The “direction” of the self in relation to certain moral goods suggests a process of self-cultivation over one’s lifetime and thus suggests a different role for processes of learning that might support the formation of the self. Central to such learning is the articulation of the moral assumptions that constitute one’s self and identity and that inform one’s actions and judgments. Rather than seeing the plurality of moral frameworks as a sign of the end of morality, Taylor sees this as an opportunity for a more deliberate engagement with the goods that constitute who we are and what we are.

In all this we can see that learning can play an important role in the formation and maintenance of the self. This is because the process of identifying and understanding oneself, the process of promoting and developing self-identification and self-understanding, and even the process of self-formation can be seen as processes of questioning, discovering, evaluating, and judging oneself through reflexivity and dialogue. They can thus be characterized as a form of reflexive learning. Given that one’s judgments and decisions about one’s life and about one’s learning (including the motivation, nature, kind, and content of learning and continuing learning) are crucially informed and supported by one’s sense of self and identity, such reflexive learning then is a mode of primary learning that might affect one’s secondary learning in, over, and about one’s life and that might affect one’s life per se. Since such learning is moved by one’s orientation toward moral good(s) and guided by one’s direction vis-à-vis the good(s) over one’s lifetime, it is a mode of learning that is inherently moral and ethical. In this regard, Taylor’s view of self and identity contributes a new perspective to lifelong learning and adult education in societies characterized by a plurality of orientations, values, and worldviews.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Bios

Kang Zhao is postdoctoral researcher at the Graduate School of Education, Peking University, China. He obtained his PhD from the University of Exeter, UK and was visiting postdoctoral scholar at the School of Education, University of Stirling, UK.

Gert Biesta () is professor of education at the School of Education, University of Stirling, UK, and visiting professor for education and democratic citizenship at Mälardalen University, Sweden.

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