A recent report of the EU states: “All citizens need to acquire and continually update their knowledge, skills and competences through lifelong learning […] This will [...] raise labour force participation and economic growth, while ensuring social cohesion.” (EU 2006) In the economic sphere of globalized modern state the conception of learning has replaced what one could characterize Bildung tradition, which in the spirit of the Enlightenment stressed the significance of education. The task of education was to enhance moral virtues, rationality and the cognitive skills required in the civic life of nation state. As Bildung tradition saw humanity in relation to nature and ideals of ethics the emphasis on learning reflects our relation to technology. Was the shift from education to learning an answer to the rapid changes in human environment, in which the education based on Bildung tradition became outdated in the sphere of global capitalism? Educationally the most striking feature of global capitalism is that it produces a particular kind of subjecitivity and it is interested in one possible subject-position, that of the subject as a consumer (Biesta 2006). In this paper, we analyze the relation between education and learning in the context of lifelong learning policy. Our analysis can be divided between the deconstructive and constructive part. Firstly, in the deconstructive part, we put the ideals or aims of lifelong learning policy against the technological world (Anders 1979;1980) that makes lifelong learning policy intelligible. However, the analysis casts doubt on the possibility to realize the ideals of that policy by continuous learning. Secondly, in the constructive part, we examine through existential conditions of educational situation in what sense the ideals of lifelong learning policy can be actualized. Therefore, we explore the current context of lifelong learning. This is the part of case philosophical analysis, in which the lifelong learning policy becomes understandable. Case philosophy, as Günther Anders (1979) puts it, is a hybrid of journalism and metaphysics. The case philosophical analysis strives from an individual phenomena to its constituents as a whole world. In this sense, we will ask, what is the world of lifelong learning? What is the role of lifelong learning in that world? Who is the learner in the lifelong learning programs? What kind of subjectivity does lifelong learning produce? Through this analysis we argue that learning is not sufficient condition for ethical subjectivity, social cohesion or motivation to learn. We state that it is only through education that these ideals of lifelong learning become possible. For that reason, we analyze lifelong learning in relation to the existential conditions of educational situation. Through the existential analysis we avoid the assumptions of transcendental subjectivity that is behind the Bildung tradition. In the existential sense education has its origin in the situation of immediate responsibility towards Otherness. This existential responsibility and the continuous signals of natality (Arendt 1998) creates the educational relation. The spontaneity of the participants (Benner 2001) requires constant reaffirmation of the relation. The responsibility towards Otherness grounds the exigencies for the reaffirmation. From that dynamics of the educational situation emerges the recognition of the Other and will to learn the situation anew. In that context we ask, what requirements follow for learning from the existential condition of education? What are the educational conditions for the realisation of the lifelong learning policy and its ideals? How lifelong learning is possible? In sum, our aim is to connect the lifelong learning policy to its world and to its necessary human condition that is education. Only that way it is possible to rethink the lifelong learning policy as capable to realize the ideals attached to it.

The lifelong learning policy is made comprehensive as an example of the human-technology relation. The necessary conditions for lifelong learning are analysed through the existential analysis of the education. The possibility to realize the aims of the lifelong learning policy is critically pondered.