Ivan Illich

Ivan Dominic Illich ( ; ; 4 September 1926 – 2 December 2002) was an Austrian Catholic priest, theologian, philosopher, and social critic. His 1971 book Deschooling Society criticises modern society's institutional approach to education, an approach that he argued demotivates and alienates individuals from the process of learning. His 1975 book Medical Nemesis, importing to the sociology of medicine the concept of medical harm, in which he argues that industrialised society impairs quality of life through processes such as overmedicalisation, the pathologisation of normal conditions, and increased dependency on medical institutions. Illich called himself "an errant pilgrim." His father was a civil engineer and a diplomat from a landed Catholic family of Dalmatia, with property in the city of Split and wine and olive oil estates on the island of Brač. His mother came from a Sephardic Jewish family Her father, Friedrich "Fritz" Regenstreif, was an industrialist who made his money in the lumber trade in Bosnia, later settling in Vienna, where he built an art nouveau villa.

His mother traveled to Vienna so that the best doctors could attend during childbirth; Ivan's father was not living in Central Europe at the time. When Ivan was three months old, he was taken along with his nurse to Split, Dalmatia (by then part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia), to be shown to his paternal grandfather. There he was baptized on 1 December 1926. In 1928 his twin brothers Alexander and Michael, were born. In 1932 his parents divorced, and his mother took all three children back to her father's house in Vienna.

Education in Italy

In 1942, after his grandfather's death, when Ivan was 16 years old, his mother fled with him and his brothers from Vienna, Austria for Florence, Italy, to escape the Nazi persecution of Jews.

Illich finished high school in Florence, and then went on to study histology and crystallography at the local University of Florence. Hoping to return to Austria following World War II, he enrolled in a doctorate in medieval history at the University of Salzburg He later learned Croatian, the language of his grandfathers, then Ancient Greek and Latin, in addition to Portuguese, Hindi, English, and other languages. 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.

The end of Illich's tenure at the university came in 1960 as the result of a controversy involving bishops James Edward McManus and James Peter Davis, who had denounced Governor Luis Muñoz Marín and his Popular Democratic Party for their positions in favor of birth control and divorce. The bishops also started their own rival Catholic party. Illich later summarized his opposition:

<blockquote>As a historian, I saw that it violated the American tradition of Church and State separation. As a politician, I predicted that there wasn't enough strength in Catholic ranks to create a meaningful platform and that failure of McManus's party would be disastrous on the already frail prestige of the Puerto Rican Church. As a theologian, I believe that the Church must always condemn injustice in the light of the Gospel, but never has the right to speak in favor of a specific political party.</blockquote>

After Illich disobeyed a direct order from McManus forbidding all priests from dining with Governor Muñoz, McManus ordered Illich to leave his post at the university, describing his presence as "dangerous to the Diocese of Ponce and its institutions." "Throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s, CIDOC was part language school and part free university for intellectuals from all over the Americas." but continued to identify as a priest and occasionally performed private masses.

In the 1970s, Illich's ideas were discussed among left-leaning intellectuals in France, his thesis having been discussed in particular by André Gorz. However, his influence declined after the 1981 election of François Mitterrand, as some commentators regarded his views as pessimistic at a time when the French Left took control of the government.

During the 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.

Personal life and death

Ivan Illich called himself "an errant pilgrim", "a wandering Jew and a Christian pilgrim", He remarked that since leaving the old house of his grandparents on the island Brač in Dalmatia, he had never had a home.

Illich died on 2 December 2002 in Bremen, Germany. Not realised was his last wish: to die surrounded by close collaborators in Bologna amid the creation of his planned, new learning centre.

Philosophical views

Illich followed the tradition of apophatic theology. A central theme in Illich’s work was his argument that Western modernity, distorted the original ethical teachings of Western Christianity. He argued that attempts to codify New Testament principles into institutional rules as rules of behavior, duty, or laws, and to institutionalize them, without limits, is a corruption that Illich detailed in his analyses of modern Western institutions, including education, charity, and medicine, among others. Illich often used the Latin phrase Corruptio optimi quae est pessima, in English The corruption of the best is the worst.

Illich believed that the Biblical God taking human form, the Incarnation, marked world history's turning point, opening new possibilities for love and knowledge. As in the First Epistle of John, it invites any believer to seek God's face in everyone encountered.

Legacy

His first book, Deschooling Society, published in 1971, was a critique of compulsory mass education. He argued that what he described as an oppressive structure of the school system could not be reformed. It must be dismantled in order to free humanity from the crippling effects of the institutionalization of all of life. He went on to critique modern mass medicine. Illich was highly influential among intellectuals and academics. He became known worldwide for his progressive polemics about how activity expressive of truly human values could be preserved and expanded in human society in the face of widespread de-humanization.

In his several influential books, he argued that the overuse of the benefits of many modern technologies and social arrangements undermines human values and human self-sufficiency, freedom, and dignity.

Health, argues Illich, is the capacity to cope with the human reality of death, pain, and sickness. Technology can benefit many; yet, he believed modern mass medicine has gone too far, turning people into risk-averse consuming objects, turning healing into science, turning medical healers into drug-surgical technicians.

The Dark Mountain Project, a creative cultural movement founded by Dougald Hine and Paul Kingsnorth emphasizing an abandonment of narratives of modern civilization, drew their inspiration from the ideas of Ivan Illich.

Published works

Deschooling Society

Illich gained public attention with his 1971 book Deschooling Society, a radical critique of educational practice in "modern" economies. Claiming examples of institutionalised education's ineffectiveness, Illich endorses self-directed education, supported by intentional social relations, in fluid informal arrangements:

The final sentence, above, clarifies Illich's view that education's institutionalisation fosters society's institutionalisation, and so de-institutionalising education may help de-institutionalize society. Further, Illich suggests reinventing learning and expanding it throughout society and across persons' lifespans. Particularly striking in 1971 was his call for advanced technology to support "learning webs":

According to a 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." Yet, unlike libertarians, Illich opposes not merely publicly funded schooling, but schools as such. Thus, Illich's envisioned disestablishment of schools aimed not to establish a free market in educational services, but to attain a fundamental shift: a deschooled society. In his 1973 book After Deschooling, What?, he asserted, "We can disestablish schools, or we can deschool culture." In fact, he called advocates of free-market education "the most dangerous category of educational reformers."

Deschooling Society was highly regarded by John Holt and other leading advocates of unschooling, and has been widely read in the homeschooling community since its dramatic growth during the 1980s.

Tools for Conviviality

Tools for Conviviality was published in 1973, two years after Deschooling Society. In this newer work, Illich generalizes the themes that he had previously applied to the educational field: 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."

Tools for Conviviality attracted worldwide attention. A résumé of it was published by French social philosopher André Gorz in Les Temps Modernes, under the title "Freeing the Future". 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.

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 vicissitudes—birth and death, for example—frequently 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, which had been scientifically established a century earlier by British nurse Florence Nightingale. Others have since voiced similar views.

To Hell with Good Intentions

In his 1968 speech at the Conference on InterAmerican Student Projects (CIASP), Illich strongly opposes the presence of American Roman Catholic missionaries, the Peace Corps and organizations like the CIASP themselves - who invited him to speak - in Mexico. Illich says that the presence of American "do-gooders" is causing more harm than good. Rather, he suggests that the Americans should travel to Latin America as tourists or students, or else stay in their homeland, where they can at least know what they are doing.

Publications

Many reprintings.
(With Barry Saunders)
(With David Cayley)
(With Irving Kenneth Zola, John McKnight, Jonathan Caplan and Harley Shaiken)

References

Sources

External links

David Tinapple Collection of Ivan Illich's speeches and books
The International Journal of Illich Studies — an open access, interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed annual publication engaging the thought/writing of Ivan Illich and his circle