This book explores how learning is the lifetime quest to understand personal identity, purpose, and meaning while conforming and adapting to the perceived and real confines of a paradoxical society. It examines the complex social experience of learning, revealing how culture, gender, race, and other societal factors shape and mold an individual's identity and ability to function in relationships which are the basis of all learning. Part 1 outlines the social context within which learning occurs. Chapters examine the process of becoming a self in society, showing how both mind and self are socially learned phenomena; develops theories of learning and action and points up the complex relationship between them; and outlines some of the contradictions of individual and social interest. Part 2 examines certain of the paradoxes in more detail, taking up themes central to the history of human thought. Chapters treat the topics of personhood; authenticity, freedom, and free will; being and having; meaning and truth; aging and changing; the political aspect of learning; and the ramifications of the preceding discussion for teaching and education. Contains approximately 200 references and an index. (GLR)