The moral point of view is the point of view of the will in so far as the latter is infinite not only in itself but also for itself (see § 104). This reflection of the will into itself and its identity for itself, as opposed to its being-in-itself and immediacy and the determinacies which develop within the latter, determine the person as a subject.

Since subjectivity now constitutes the determinacy of the concept and is distinct from the concept as such (i.e. from the will which has being in itself), and more precisely since the will of the subject, as the individual [des Einzelnen] who has being for himself, at the same time exists (i.e. still has immediacy in it), it follows that subjectivity constitutes the existence [Dasein] of the concept. – A higher ground has thereby been determined for freedom; the Idea's aspect of existence [Existenz], its real moment, is now the subjectivity of the will. Only in the will as subjective will can freedom, or the will which has being in itself be actual.

Ethical life is the Idea of freedom as the living good which has its knowledge and volition in self-consciousness, and its actuality through self-conscious action. Similarly, it is in ethical being that self-consciousness has its motivating end and a foundation which has being in and for itself. Ethical life is accordingly the concept of freedom which has become the existing [vorhandenen] world and the nature of self-consciousness.

Since this unity of the concept of the will with its existence [Dasein], i.e. with the particular will, is knowledge, consciousness of the difference between these moments of the Idea is present, but in such a way that each of these moments has become for itself the totality of the Idea and has the latter as its foundation and content.

The objective sphere of ethics, which takes the place of the abstract good, is substance made concrete by subjectivity as infinite form. It therefore posits distinctions within itself which are thus determined by the concept. These distinctions give the ethical a fixed content which is necessary for itself, and whose existence [Bestehen] is exalted above subjective opinions and preferences: they are laws and institutions which have being in and for themselves.

The person must give himself an external sphere of freedom in order to have being as Idea. The person is the infinite will, the will which has being in and for itself, in this first and as yet wholly abstract determination. Consequently, this sphere distinct from the will, which may constitute the sphere of its freedom, is likewise determined as immediately different and separable from it.

Addition (H). The rational aspect of property is to be found not in the satisfaction of needs but in the superseding of mere subjectivity of personality. Not until he has property does the person exist as reason. Even if this first reality of my freedom is in an external thing [Sache] and is thus a poor kind of reality, the abstract personality in its very immediacy can have no other existence [Dasein] than in the determination of immediacy.

What is immediately different from the free spirit is, for the latter and in itself, the external in general – a thing [Sache], something unfree, impersonal, and without rights.

The state is the actuality of the ethical Idea – the ethical spirit as substantial will, manifest and clear to itself, which thinks and knows itself and implements what it knows in so far as it knows it. It has its immediate existence [Existenz] in custom and its mediate existence in the self-consciousness of the individual [des Einzelnen], in the individual's knowledge and activity, just as self-consciousness, by virtue of its disposition, has its substantial freedom in the state as its essence, its end, and the product of its activity.

The state is the actuality of the substantial will, an actuality which it possesses in the particular self-consciousness when this has been raised to its universality; as such, it is the rational in and for itself. This substantial unity is an absolute and unmoved end in itself, and in it, freedom enters into its highest right, just as this ultimate end possesses the highest right in relation to individuals [die Einzelnen], whose highest duty is to be members of the state.

The will which is free in and for itself, as it is in its abstract concept, is in the determinate condition of immediacy. Accordingly, in contrast with reality, it is its own negative actuality, whose reference to itself is purely abstract – the inherently individual [in sich einzelner] will of a subject. In accordance with the moment of particularity of the will, it has in addition a content consisting of determinate ends, and as exclusive individuality [Einzelheit], it simultaneously encounters this content as an external world immediately confronting it.

Addition (H). When I say that the will which is free in and for itself, as it is in its abstract concept, is in the determinate condition of immediacy, this should be understood as follows. The completed Idea of the will is that condition in which the concept has fully realized itself and in which its existence [Dasein] is nothing but the concept's own development. Initially, however, the concept is abstract – that is, although all its determinations are contained within it, they are no more than contained in it: they have being only in themselves and have not yet developed into a totality in their own right. If I say that I am free, ‘I’ is still this being-within-itself [Insichsein] without any opposition. In morality, on the other hand, there is already an opposition; for in this sphere, I am present as an individual will, whereas the good is the universal, even though it is within me.

The family, as the immediate substantiality of spirit, has as its determination the spirit's feeling [Empfindung] of its own unity, which is love. Thus, the disposition [appropriate to the family] is to have self-consciousness of one's individuality within this unity as essentiality which has being in and for itself, so that one is present in it not as an independent person [eine Person für sich] but as a member.

Addition (H,G). Love means in general the consciousness of my unity with another, so that I am not isolated on my own [für mich], but gain my self-consciousness only through the renunciation of my independent existence [meines Fürsichseins] and through knowing myself as the unity of myself with another and of the other with me. But love is a feeling [Empfindung], that is, ethical life in its natural form. In the state, it is no longer present. There, one is conscious of unity as law; there, the content must be rational, and I must know it. The first moment in love is that I do not wish to be an independent person in my own right [für mich] and that, if I were, I would feel deficient and incomplete. The second moment is that I find myself in another person, that I gain recognition in this person [daß ich in ihr gelte], who in turn gains recognition in me. Love is therefore the most immense contradiction; the understanding cannot resolve it, because there is nothing more intractable than this punctiliousness of the self-consciousness which is negated and which I ought nevertheless to possess as affirmative.

The finitude of the subjective will in the immediacy of action consists immediately in the fact that the action of the will presupposes an external object [Gegenstand] with various attendant circumstances. The deed posits an alteration to this given existence [Dasein], and the will is entirely responsible for it in so far as the abstract predicate ‘mine’ attaches to the existence so altered.

Addition (H). I can be made responsible for whatever was contained in my purpose, and this is the chief consideration as far as crime is concerned. But responsibility involves only the wholly external judgement as to whether I have done something or not; and the fact that I am responsible for something does not mean that the thing [Sache] can be imputed to me.

The subject-matter of the philosophical science of right is the Idea of right – the concept of right and its actualization.

Addition (H). The concept and its existence [Existenz] are two aspects [of the same thing], separate and united, like soul and body. The body is the same life as the soul, and yet the two can be said to lie outside one another. A soul without a body would not be a living thing, and vice versa. Thus the existence [Dasein] of the concept is its body, just as the latter obeys the soul which produced it.

The situated nature of learning, remembering, and understanding is a central fact. It may appear obvious that human minds develop in social situations, and that they use the tools and representational media that culture provides to support, extend, and reorganize mental functioning. But cognitive theories of knowledge representation and educational practice, in school and in the workplace, have not been sufficiently responsive to questions about these relationships. And the need for responsiveness has become salient as computational media radically reshape the frontiers of individual and social action, and as educational achievement fails to translate into effective use of knowledge.

This series is born of the conviction that new and exciting interdisciplinary syntheses are under way, as scholars and practitioners from diverse fields seek to analyze and influence the new transformations of social and mental life, and to understand successful learning wherever it occurs.

Computational media include not only computers but the vast array of expressive, receptive, and presentational devices available for use with computers, including interactive video, optical media such as CD-ROM and CD-I, networks, hyper-media systems, work-group collaboration tools, speech recognition and synthesis, image processing and animation, and software more generally.

These technologies are dramatically transforming the basic patterns of communication and knowledge interchange in societies, and automating the component processes of thinking and problem solving. In changing situations of knowledge acquisition and use, the new interactive technologies redefine – in ways yet to be determined – what it means to know and understand, and what it means to become “literate” or an “educated citizen.”

We now can begin to turn the observations of the previous chapter into objects to be analyzed. In the following sections, we recast the central characteristics of these several historical realizations of apprenticeship in terms of legitimate peripheral participation. First, we discuss the structuring resources that shape the process and content of learning possibilities and apprentices' changing perspectives on what is known and done. Then we argue that “transparency” of the sociopolitical organization of practice, of its content and of the artifacts engaged in practice, is a crucial resource for increasing participation. We next examine the relation of newcomers to the discourse of practice. This leads to a discussion of how identity and motivation are generated as newcomers move toward full participation. Finally, we explore contradictions inherent in learning, and the relations of the resulting conflicts to the development of identity and the transformation of practice.

STRUCTURING RESOURCES FOR LEARNING IN PRACTICE

One of the first things people think of when apprenticeship is mentioned is the master–apprentice relation. But in practice the roles of masters are surprisingly variable across time and place. A specific master–apprentice relation is not even ubiquitously characteristic of apprenticeship learning. Indeed, neither Yucatec midwives nor quartermasters learn in specific master–apprentice relations. Newcomers to A. A. do have special relations with specific old-timers who act as their sponsors, but these relations are not what defines them as newcomers.

Until recently, the notion of a concept was viewed as something for which clarity, precision, simplicity, and maximum definition seemed commendable. We have tried, in reflective consonance with our theoretical perspective, to reconceive it in interconnected, relational terms. Thus the concept of legitimate peripheral participation obtains its meaning, not in a concise definition of its boundaries, but in its multiple, theoretically generative interconnections with persons, activities, knowing, and world. Exploring these interconnections in specific cases has provided a way to engage in the practice–theory project that insists on participation in the lived-in world as a key unit of analysis in a theory of social practice (which includes learning), and to develop our thinking in the spirit of this theoretically integrative enterprise.

There has crept into our analysis, as we have moved away from conventional notions of learning, an expanded scale of time and a more encompassing view of what constitutes learning activity. Legitimate peripheral participation has led us to emphasize the sustained character of developmental cycles of communities of practice, the gradual process of fashioning relations of identity as a full practitioner, and the enduring strains inherent in the continuity–displacement contradiction. This longer and broader conception of what it means to learn, implied by the concept of legitimate peripheral participation, comes closer to embracing the rich significance of learning in human experience.

I first encountered these ideas in spring of 1990, when Jean Lave spoke at the Workshop on Linguistic Practice at the University of Chicago. There were about a dozen of us, mostly working on problems in language use and interaction; mostly anthropologists, linguists, or hybrids; several with research commitments to a non-Western language. I had just completed a study of reference as a social practice, in which I analyzed Yucatec Maya language use in its linguistic, indexical, and cultural contexts (1990). One of the central issues being pursued in the workshop was the relation between context and literal meaning or, in somewhat more technical terms, the role of indexicality in semantics. Coming from this angle, Lave and Wenger's work was really exciting because it located learning squarely in the processes of coparticipation, not in the heads of individuals. The analogy to language was just below the surface, only occasionally made explicit during several hours of very fruitful discussion, and yet many of us felt that we had gained new insights into problems of language. We had already been exploring speech as interaction, trying to take meaning production out of the heads of individual speakers and locate it in the fields of social interaction. The 1990 presentation, and Jean Lave's ability to engage intellectually in the issues it raised, provoked some of the best discussion we have enjoyed.