The paper is mainly concerned with exploring the essence of lifelong education which was implied
in the philosophy of Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche. The essence of lifelong education in this paper is
defined as the four pillars of education revealed in the UNESCO Delors report: learning to know,
learning to do, learning to live together, and learning to be. The thesis is an exploratory research in
that few researches have carried out Nietzsche’s philosophy from the aspects of lifelong education.
The academic necessity of the paper could be considered in terms of the weight and importance of
Nietzsche’s philosophy when discussing the essence of 21st century lifelong education. It is because
the ontology and epistemology are fundamentally based on the four pillars of lifelong education, and
Nietzsche’s philosophy, in contrast with the traditional western metaphysics, is considered as
providing us with deconstructive point of view for the lifelong education. This paper, comparing with
the western traditional metaphysic, explores the implications of Nietzsche’s philosophy in lifelong
education based on the ontology and epistemology concerning the four pillars of education which
were defined as the essence of lifelong education. The paper, based on this, also discuss what the
Nietzsche’s philosophy implies to the 21st postmodern Korean lifelong education.