The relations among learning, work and subjectivity are discussed here to offer explanations about how individuals direct their learning throughout their working lives. These explanations are salient for informing policy and practice about learning for, through and throughout working life. The prospects for realising the kinds of goals that governments, employers and workers themselves want to achieve through their ongoing learning can be explained through understanding what motivates, directs and sustains that learning. Central here is the role that individuals' subjectivity plays in explaining the relations between individuals, their work and their learning for work, and the relationships among them. Four distinct conceptions of self are presented and discussed in terms of how that subjectivity is represented across and within perspectives informing considerations of work and learning. These different conceptions aim to open up and energize the emerging discussion about the role of self or subjectivity in relations among learning, subjectivity and work. Proposed here is the view that the self arises through social experience and stands as the personal basis that mediates relations about work and learning throughout working life. (Contains 1 table.)