Ivan Illich

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Ivan Illich (/vn lt/; 4 September 1926 2 December 2002) was

a Croatian-Austrian philosopher, Roman Catholic priest, and critic of Ivan Illich
the institutions of modern Western culture, who addressed
contemporary practices in education, medicine, work, energy use,
transportation, and economic development.

Contents
1 Personal life
2 Deschooling Society
3 Tools for Conviviality
4 Medical Nemesis
5 Concepts
6 List of works
7 See also
8 Notes
9 References
10 Further reading
11 External links Born September 4, 1926
11.1 General Vienna, Austria
11.2 Obituaries Died December 2, 2002 (aged 76)
Bremen, Germany

Personal life Era Contemporary philosophy

Region Western philosophy
Illich was born in Vienna to a Croatian Catholic father, engineer Ivan School Anarchism, Catholicism
Peter Illich, and a Sephardic Jewish mother, Ellen ne Regenstreif-
Main Philosophy of education,
Ortlieb.[1] His maternal grandmother was from Texas.[2] Illich spoke interests Philosophy of technology
Italian, Spanish, French, and German fluently.[3][4][5] He later learned
Croatian, the language of his grandfathers, then Ancient Greek and Influences
Latin, in addition to Portuguese, Hindi, English, and other languages.[3] Arnold J. Toynbee, Everett
He studied histology and crystallography at the University of Florence Reimer, Jacques Maritain,
(Italy) as well as theology and philosophy at the Pontifical Gregorian Leopold Kohr, Jacques Ellul,
University in Rome (from 1942 to 1946), and medieval history in Hugh of Saint Victor, Emmanuel
Salzburg.[3] Levinas
He wrote a dissertation focusing on the historian Arnold J. Toynbee and Influenced
would return to that subject in his later years. In 1951, he "signed up to Everett Reimer, Andr Gorz, Lee
become a parish priest in one of New Yorks poorest neighborhoods Felsenstein, Wolfgang Sachs,
Washington Heights, on the northern tip of Manhattan, then a barrio Kevin Carson, Bob Black, John
of fresh-off-the-airplane Puerto Rican immigrants."[6] In 1956, at the Zerzan, Barry Sanders
age of 30, he was appointed as the vice rector of the Catholic University
of Puerto Rico, "a position he managed to keep for several years before getting thrown outIllich was just a
little too loud in his criticism of the Vaticans pronouncements on birth control and comparatively demure
silence about the bomb."[6] It was in Puerto Rico that Illich met Everett Reimer and the two began to analyze
their own functions as "educational" leaders. In 1959, he traveled throughout South America on foot and by
bus.[3]
In 1961, Illich founded the Centro Intercultural de Documentacin (CIDOC, or Intercultural Documentation
Center) at Cuernavaca in Mexico, ostensibly a research center offering language courses to missionaries from
North America and volunteers of the Alliance for Progress program[3] initiated by John F. Kennedy. His real
intent was to document the participation of the Vatican in the "modern development" of the so-called Third
World. Illich looked askance at the liberal pity or conservative imperiousness that motivated the rising tide of
global industrial development. He viewed such emissaries as a form of industrial hegemony and, as such, an act
of "war on subsistence." He sought to teach missionaries dispatched by the Church not to impose their own
cultural values[7] and to identify themselves instead as guests of the host country. "Throughout the late 60s and
early 70s, CIDOC was part language school and part free university for intellectuals from all over the
Americas."[6]

At the CIDOC, "Illich was able to develop his potent and highly influential critique of Third World
development schemes and their fresh-faced agents: Kennedys Alliance for Progress, the Peace Corps, and
countless other missionary efforts bankrolled and organized by wealthy nations, foundations, and religious
groups."[6] After ten years, critical analysis from the CIDOC of the institutional actions by the Church brought
the organization into conflict with the Vatican. Unpopular with the local chapter of Opus Dei,[6] Illich was
called to Rome for questioning, due in part to a CIA report.[3] In 1976, Illich, apparently concerned by the
influx of formal academics and the potential side effects of its own "institutionalization," shut the center down
with consent from the other members of the CIDOC. Several of the members subsequently continued language
schools in Cuernavaca, of which some still exist. Illich himself resigned from the active priesthood in the late
1960s (having attained the rank of monsignor), but continued to identify as a priest and occasionally performed
private masses.

In the 1970s, Illich was popular among leftist intellectuals in France, his thesis having been discussed in
particular by Andr Gorz. However, his influence declined after the 1981 election of Franois Mitterrand as
Illich was considered too pessimistic at a time when the French Left took control of the government.[3]

In the 1980s and beyond, Illich traveled extensively, mainly splitting his time between the United States,
Mexico, and Germany. He held an appointment as a Visiting Professor of Philosophy, Science, Technology and
Society at Penn State. He also taught at the University of Bremen and University of Hagen.[8] During his last
days of his life he admitted that he was greatly influenced by one of the Indian economists and adviser to M.K.
Gandhi, J.C. Kumarappa, most notably, his book, Economy of Permanence.[9]

Deschooling Society
The book that brought Ivan Illich to public attention was Deschooling Society (1971), a radical critical
discourse on education as practised in "modern" economies. Giving examples of what he regards as the
ineffectual nature of institutionalized education, Illich posited self-directed education, supported by intentional
social relations, in fluid informal arrangements:

Universal education through schooling is not feasible. It would be no more feasible if it were
attempted by means of alternative institutions built on the style of present schools. Neither new
attitudes of teachers toward their pupils nor the proliferation of educational hardware or software
(in classroom or bedroom), nor finally the attempt to expand the pedagogue's responsibility until it
engulfs his pupils' lifetimes will deliver universal education. The current search for new
educational funnels must be reversed into the search for their institutional inverse: educational
webs which heighten the opportunity for each one to transform each moment of his living into one
of learning, sharing, and caring. We hope to contribute concepts needed by those who conduct such
counterfoil research on education--and also to those who seek alternatives to other established
service industries.

Ivan Illich[10]
The last sentence makes clear what the title suggeststhat the institutionalization of education tends towards
the institutionalization of society and that ideas for de-institutionalizing education may be a starting point for a
de-institutionalized society.

The book is more than a critiqueit contains suggestions for a reinvention of learning throughout society and
lifetime. Particularly striking is his call (in 1971) for the use of advanced technology to support "learning
webs."

The operation of a peer-matching network would be simple. The user would identify himself by
name and address and describe the activity for which he sought a peer. A computer would send
him back the names and addresses of all those who had inserted the same description. It is amazing
that such a simple utility has never been used on a broad scale for publicly valued activity.

Ivan Illich

According to a contemporary review in The Libertarian Forum, "Illich's advocacy of the free market in
education is the bone in the throat that is choking the public educators."[11] Since Illich's opposition was not
merely to publicly funded schooling, as with the libertarians, but to schooling as such; the disestablishment of
schools was for him not a means to a free market in educational services, but a deschooled society, which was a
more fundamental shift. As he later asserted in After Deschooling, What? (1973): 'We can disestablish schools,
or we can deschool culture'.[12] He actually opposed advocates of free-market education as "the most dangerous
category of educational reformers."[13]

Tools for Conviviality

Tools for Conviviality (1973) was published only two years after Deschooling Society. In this new work Illich
generalized the themes that he had previously applied to the field of education: the institutionalization of
specialized knowledge, the dominant role of technocratic elites in industrial society, and the need to develop
new instruments for the reconquest of practical knowledge by the average citizen. He wrote that "[e]lite
professional groups . . . have come to exert a 'radical monopoly' on such basic human activities as health,
agriculture, home-building, and learning, leading to a 'war on subsistence' that robs peasant societies of their
vital skills and know-how. The result of much economic development is very often not human flourishing but
'modernized poverty,' dependency, and an out-of-control system in which the humans become worn-down
mechanical parts."[6] Illich proposed that we should "invert the present deep structure of tools" in order to "give
people tools that guarantee their right to work with independent efficiency."[14]

Tools for Conviviality attracted worldwide attention. A rsum of it was published by French social philosopher
Andr Gorz in Les Temps Modernes, under the title "Freeing the Future."[15] The book's vision of tools that
would be developed and maintained by a community of users had a significant influence on the first developers
of the personal computer, notably Lee Felsenstein.[16]

Medical Nemesis
In his Medical Nemesis, first published in 1975, also known as Limits to Medicine, Illich subjected
contemporary Western medicine to detailed attack. He argued that the medicalization in recent decades of so
many of life's vicissitudesbirth and death, for examplefrequently caused more harm than good and
rendered many people in effect lifelong patients. He marshalled a body of statistics to show what he considered
the shocking extent of post-operative side-effects and drug-induced illness in advanced industrial society. He
introduced to a wider public the notion of iatrogenic disease,[17] which had been scientifically established a
century earlier by British nurse Florence Nightingale (18201910). Others have since voiced similar views.[18]

Concepts
Counterproductivity
The main notion of Ivan Illich is the concept of counterproductivity: when institutions of modern
industrial society impede their purported aims. For example, Ivan Illich calculated that, in America in the
1970s, if you add the time spent to work to earn the money to buy a car, the time spent in the car
(including traffic jam), the time spent in the health care industry because of a car crash, the time spent in
the oil industry to fuel cars ...etc., and you divide the number of kilometres traveled per year by that, you
obtain the following calculation: 10000 km per year per person divided by 1600 hours per year per
American equals 6 km per hour. So the real speed of a car would be about 3.7 miles per hour.

Specific diseconomy
Specific diseconomy is another term Illich used, as a measure of the degree of institutional
counterproductivity that is occurringreferring to the exact degree to which, for example, the medical
industry induces illness, educational institutions induce ignorance, the judicial system perpetuates
injustice, or national defense may make a nation less secure. When specific diseconomy is on the
increase, this means an institution or industry is increasingly counterproductive to its original intentions.

Radical monopoly
He invented the concept of radical monopoly: when a technical medium is or appears to be more
effective, it creates a monopoly which denies access to other media. The mandatory consumption of a
medium which uses a lot of energy (for example motorised transportation) narrows the fruition of use
value (innate transit ability).

By "radical monopoly" I mean the dominance of one type of product rather than the dominance of
one brand. I speak about radical monopoly when one industrial production process exercises an
exclusive control over the satisfaction of a pressing need, and excludes nonindustrial activities
from competition.

Ivan Illich, [19]

Conviviality
Illich worked to open new possibilities. Illich devotes a chapter of Deschooling Society to the proposal to
the Rebirth of Epimethean Man.[20] He argued that we need convivial tools as opposed to machines. A
tool may have many applications, some very different from its original intended use. A tool may be
thought of as an expression of its user. The opposite of this is the machine, where humans become its
servants, their role consisting only of running the machine for a single purpose.

I choose the term "conviviality" to designate the opposite of industrial productivity. I intend it to
mean autonomous and creative intercourse among persons, and the intercourse of persons with
their environment; and this in contrast with the conditioned response of persons to the demands
made upon them by others, and by a man-made environment. I consider conviviality to be
individual freedom realized in personal interdependence and, as such, an intrinsic ethical value. I
believe that, in any society, as conviviality is reduced below a certain level, no amount of industrial
productivity can effectively satisfy the needs it creates among society's members.

Ivan Illich, [21]

List of works
Die philosophischen Grundlagen der Geschichtsschreibung bei Arnold J. Toynbee. Salzburg: Diss. 1951.
Celebration of Awareness. 1971. ISBN 0-7145-0837-3.
Deschooling Society. 1971. ISBN 0-06-012139-4.
Tools for Conviviality. 1973. ISBN 0-06-080308-8, ISBN 0-06-012138-6.
Energy and Equity. 1974. ISBN 0-06-080327-4.
Medical Nemesis. London: Calder & Boyars. 1974. ISBN 0-7145-1096-3. OCLC 224760852.
 Medical Nemesis. 1975. ISBN 0-394-71245-5, ISBN 0-7145-1095-5, ISBN 0-7145-1096-3.
The Right to Useful Unemployment. 1978. ISBN 0-7145-2628-2.
Toward a History of Needs. 1978. ISBN 0-394-41040-8, ISBN 0-394-73501-3.
Shadow Work. 1981. ISBN 0-7145-2711-4, ISBN 0-7145-2710-6.
Gender. 1982. ISBN 0-394-52732-1.
H2O and the Waters of Forgetfulness. 1985. ISBN 0-911005-06-4.
ABC: The Alphabetization of the Popular Mind. 1988. ISBN 0-86547-291-2. Coauthored with Barry
Sanders
In the Mirror of the Past. 1992. ISBN 0-7145-2937-0.
In the Vineyard of the Text: A Commentary to Hugh's Didascalicon. 1993. ISBN 0-226-37235-9.
Blasphemy: A Radical Critique of Our Technological Culture. We the People. Morristown, NJ: Aaron
Press. July 1995. ISBN 978-1-882206-02-5.
interviews with David Cayley, ed. (1992). Ivan Illich in Conversation. Toronto: House of Anansi Press.
The Rivers North of the Future - The Testament of Ivan Illich as told to David Cayley. Toronto: House of
Anansi Press. 2005. ISBN 0-88784-714-5.
David Cayley, ed. (2000). Corruption of Christianity. ISBN 0-660-18099-5.
Disoccupazione creativa (Creative Disoccupation), Italy, Italian, 1977
Beyond Economics and Ecology. ISBN 978-0-714531-58-8.:[22] Edited by Prof Sajay Samuel

See also
Credentialism
Critical pedagogy
Critique of technology
Development criticism
Ecopedagogy
Free software movement
Holistic education
Shadow work

Notes

1. Hansom 2001
2. "Ivan Illich" (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1415202/Ivan-Illich.html). The Daily
Telegraph. December 5, 2002.
3. Paquot, Thierry (January 2003). "The Non-Conformist" (http://mondediplo.com/2003/01/15illich). Le
Monde diplomatique.
4. "La rsistance selon Ivan Illich" (http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/2003/01/PAQUOT/9866). 1 January
2003.
5. Barton, Tim. "BLUE: OBITUARY - Ivan Illich" (http://www.europeansocialecologyinstitute.org/site/new
s/obit/illich.html).
6. Madar, Chase (1 February 2010). "The Peoples Priest" (http://www.theamericanconservative.com/article
s/the-peoples-priest/). The American Conservative.
7. du Plessix Gray 1970, pp. 44 & 49
8. Illich, Ivan (1999). "Editorial - 'Deschooling Society by Ivan Illich' (http://www.ecobooks.com/books/des
chooling.htm). Marion Boyars Publishers, 1999.
9. Solomon Victus, Jesus and Mother Economy: An Introduction to the Theology of J.C.Kumarappa, New
Delhi: ISPCK, 2007.
10. "Deschooling Society, by Ivan Illich" (http://www.ecotopia.com/webpress/deschooling.htm).
11. Liggio, Leonard "Disestablish Public Education" (https://mises.org/daily/4077), The Libertarian Forum
(1971)
12. Illich, Ivan (1976). After deschooling, what? (Repr. ed.). London: Writers and Readers Pub. Cooperative.
p. 48. ISBN 0-904613-36-4.
13. Illich, Ivan (1977). Toward a history of needs. Berkley: Heyday Books. p. 78. ISBN 978-0-930588-26-7.
14. Illich 1973
 15. "Dfinition Andr Gorz" (http://www.techno-science.net/?onglet=glossaire&definition=1048). techno-
science.net (in French). Encyclopdie scientifique en ligne.
16. "Convivial Cybernetic Devices, From Vacuum Tube Flip-Flops to the Singing Altair, An Interview with
Lee Felsenstein (Part 1)" (http://opencollector.org/history/homebrew/engv3n1.html). The Analytical
Engine. Computer History Association of California. 3 (1). November 1995. ISSN 1071-6351 (https://w
ww.worldcat.org/issn/1071-6351).
17. Illich 1974b
18. Postman 1992
19. Illich 1973, p52.
20. "Indagini su Epimeteo tra Ivan Illich, Konrad Weiss e Carl Schmitt" (http://www.ilcovile.it/scritti/Quader
ni%20del%20Covile%20n.4%20-%20Indagini%20su%20Epimeteo%20tra%20Ivan%20Illich,%20Konra
d%20Weiss%20e%20Carl%20Schmitt.pdf) (PDF). Il Covile. 2008. Retrieved 22 February 2013.
21. Illich 1973, Tools for Conviviality, Chapter II Convivial Reconstruction
22. Illich, Ivan; Brown, Jerry (1 January 2013). "Beyond Economics and Ecology: The Radical Thought of
Ivan Illich" (https://books.google.com/books/about/Beyond_Economics_and_Ecology.html?id=k7IJngE
ACAAJ). Marion Boyars Publishers, Limited via Google Books.

References
Hansom, Paul (2001). Twentieth-century European cultural theorists. Detroit, Mich.: Gale Group. p. 212.
ISBN 0-7876-4659-8.
Illich, Ivan (1973). Tools for Conviviality. ISBN 0-06-080308-8, ISBN 0-06-012138-6.
Illich, Ivan (1974). Medical Nemesis. London: Calder & Boyars. ISBN 0-7145-1096-3.
OCLC 224760852.
du Plessix Gray, Francine (April 25, 1970). "Profiles: The Rules of the Game". The New Yorker: 4092.
Postman, Neil (1992). Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology. New York: Knopf.
OCLC 24694343.

Further reading
Brown, Jerry (March 2003). "A Voice for Conviviality". Utne Reader.
Derber, Charles; Schwartz, William A.; Magrass, Yale (1990). Power in the Highest Degree:
Professionals and the Rise of a New Mandarin Order. Oxford University Press.
Gabbard, D. A. (1993). Silencing Ivan Illich: A Foucauldian Analysis of Intellectual Exclusion. New
York: Austin & Winfield. ISBN 1-880921-17-0.
Winkler, J.T. The intellectual celebrity syndrome. Lancet, 1987 Feb.21, 1: 450.

External links
General

The International Journal of Illich Studies an open access, interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed annual
publication engaging the thought/writing of Ivan Illich and his circle.
Ivan-illich.org: Thirteen Ways of Looking at Ivan Illich
Ournature.org: Ivan Illich Archives
The Preservation Institute: Illich's writings on the web
Altruists.org; Collection of Illich Resources, including MP3s
Davidtinapple.com: An extensive set of Illich's writings and recordings
uni-bremen.de: Thinking After Illich
Opencollector.org: Full text of Tools for Conviviality
Text of To Hell With Good Intentions Cuernavaca, Mexico, on April 20, 1968.
Wtp.org: Ivan Illich with Jerry Brown KPFA, 22 March 22, 1996.
The Encyclopaedia of Informal Education: Illich article
The Challenges of Ivan Illich: A Collective Reflection, p. 0, at Google Books
Obituaries

"A Turbulent Priest in the Global Village" by Richard Wall, LewRockwell.com

Obituary from The Guardian
"Remembering Ivan Illich" Whole Earth Magazine, Spring 2003
Obituary from The Lancet Volume 361, Issue 9352, Page 185, 11 January 2003 [1] by Pearce Wright,

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