In this paper, Adrienne Johnson looks to connect the philosophies of Charles Taylor and Hans-Georg Gadamer toward lifelong education, specifically as they relate to UNESCO's second and third educational principles of democracy, broadly conceived as the realization of one's own potential and human development, understood as the complete fulfillment of humankind as an individual and as a community member. Johnson's goal in this work is to not only tease out some of the tensions encountered within the UNESCO document, but more importantly to explore the hermeneutic ideas embedded within UNESCO's conception of lifelong education.