Ivan Illich

Ivan Illich , born with Vienna in Austria the September 4th 1926 and deceased the December 2nd 2002 with Bremen in Germany, is a thinker of the ecology policy and an important figure of the criticism of the industrial society.

Biography

His/her father, Piero, come from a family having of the grounds (vines and olive-trees) in Dalmatie, close to the town of Split in Croatia. His/her mother, Ellen, go down from a converted German Jewish family.

Fritz Regenstrief, his/her maternal grandfather made fortune in the wood sale in Bosnia-Herzégovine and built a villa art nouveau in the neighborhoods of Vienna (Austria).

During the years 1930, xenophobia and the anti-semitism go up in Yugoslavia. The government continues Fritz Regenstrief with the international permanent Cour of justice of $the Hague. In 1932, Ellen gives up Split and share to take refuge in the villa of his/her father in Vienna with his three children. They will not re-examine any more Piero, which dies during the Second world war. In 1942, it leaves the Austria under the terms of the laws Antisémite S, the Nazi S seized the family villa.

Ivan Illich continues its education with Florence, where he plays a small role in the Italian resistance. After the war, he studies the Théologie and the Philosophie with the Gregorian Université of Rome. The the Vatican intends it for the diplomacy, but it chooses to turn to the priesthood. He will say his first mass in the catacombs in which the Roman Christians fled persecutions.

Coming from an aristocratic family having old bonds with the Roman Catholic church, it was intended to become a prince of the Church. Giovanni Montini, which became later the pope Paul VI was among those which pushed it to remain with Rome.

But in 1951, it leaves to the the United States in the idea to study work of Alchimie of Albertus Magnus with Princeton. Intrigued by Oporto Yankees and their deep Catholic faith , it requires of Francis Spellman a station in a Porto Rican parish of New York. It becomes then, between 1956 and 1960, vice-rector of the catholic University of Puerto Rico, where it sets up a training center intended to train the priests with the Latin-American culture.

In 1956, it is named vice vice-chancellor of the catholic university of Puerto Rico. Two things strike it at the university: on the one hand surprising it similarity enters the church and the school, on the other hand the strange difference between the acknowledged goals of the education and its results. The latter claims to reduce the social inequalities, but contributes to accentuate them by concentrating the privileges in the hands of those having the sufficient luggage. This reflection will lead in 1971 to Deschooling Society , translated into French under the title a company without school .

It leaves Puerto Rico in 1960 following a disagreement with the hierarchy of the Church, two bishops who took part in the political life while opposing any candidate who would like to legalize the Préservatifs. For Illich enters the atomic bomb and the condoms, the Church is mistaken in target.

In 1961, it founds the Center for the intercultural formation with Cuernavaca which will become famous CIDOC (Center for Intercultural Documentation). This center will function of 1966 with 1976. After its closing, Illich will return to live in Europe and he will teach in particular the history of the Early middle ages in Bremen, in Germany. It deceased in 2002 of the continuations of a tumor that he has voluntarily selected to assume until the end and not to operate, and which he kept 20 years.

Theories

Radical monopoly

Inventor of the concept of radical Monopole (when average a technique is or seems too effective, it creates a Monopole and prevents the access to the slower means, like the highways with respect to the walking for example). " When an industry assumes the right to satisfy, only, an elementary need, until there the object of an individual answer, it produces such a monopoly. The obligatory consumption of a good which consumes much energy (motorized transport) restricted the conditions of pleasure of a superabundant practical value (innate capacity of transit). " (Ivan Illich, Energy and equity, 1975)

Against productivity

The principal concept illichienne is the concept of the against-productivity , which describes an embarrassing phenomenon: when they reach a threshold criticizes (and are in situation of monopoly) the great institutions of our industrial modern societies set up sometimes without the knowledge in obstacles with their own operation: medicine harms health (killing the disease sometimes with the detriment of the health of the patient), transport and speed makes waste time, the school abêtit, the communications become so dense and if invading that nobody any more listens or is not made hear, etc

Thinker of the ecology policy, it fought against the system the too fast Automobile and all means of transport which it considered alienating and illusory. He for example had calculated that by taking of account time average past to work to acquire a car and to face the expenses which are bound there and not only time spent to lead this one, the speed of the racing car was of 6 km/h. Indeed, an American devoted on average, during the Années 1970, 1600 hours per annum for his car and traversed only 10000 kilometers during the year. Illich was also against our health systems and the obligatory school, which he regarded as not-convivial tools.

User-friendliness

He worked to create tracks towards other possibilities, which are expressed according to him by a return to convivial tools, that he opposes to the machines. The tool accepts several sometimes diverted uses, original direction, and thus the free expression of that which uses it. With a machine the Homme becomes servant, his role being limited from now on to make function a machine built with a precise aim. One can have an idea of user-friendliness at Illich with the relation Autonomie and heteronomy connected to the practical values and of marxiennes exchange and with the idea of Union-with-world of Erich Fromm.

One can to consider it, with its friend Jacques Ellul, as one of principal inspirers of concepts of “After-development” (diffused in particular by authors which worked with Illich, such Majid Rahnema or Gustavo Esteva), of “voluntary Simplicité” and more recently of “bearable Décroissance”.

Origin of the modern world

In the book To rivet north off the future: the will off Ivan Illich ace told to David Caryley , Illich reports in oral talks a particular vision of the history. For him, the Institutions of today which want to be universal and establish a radical monopoly are inherited the Catholicisme.

By the way in particular of the school: “Each people had his dances of the rain and his rites of initiations, but never a ritual which protested its universal validity, a procedure being presented itself in the form of an inevitable destination for everyone, in all the countries. ” The school became according to Illich a universal religion, and as such, testifies to its heritage of the first institution which declared its services and its ministries like the single way towards safety: the Roman Catholic church. (Introduction).

For Illich, according to the proverb corruptio optimi quae is pessima (“the corruption of best becomes the worst”), the modern world is neither the achievement of Christianity nor its negation, but rather its perversion. New freedoms that Jesus brought to us made possible of new excesses. By releasing the man of the old traditions and the ethnic habits (freedom expressed according to Illich in the parabola of the Samaritan, who transgresses cleavages) to help and thus choose its next, the man also loses the parapets that those could represent.

Work

To release the future , Threshold, Paris, 1971.
a company without school , Threshold, 1971 (original title: Deschooling Society )
the User-friendliness , Threshold, 1973 (original title: Tools for conviviality )
Energy and medical equity , Threshold, 1973. French full text
Némésis , Threshold, 1975
creative Unemployment , Threshold, 1977.
phantom Work , Threshold, 1981.
the vernacular Kind , Threshold, 1983.
H2O or Water of the lapse of memory , Commonplace, 1988.
ABC, elimination of illiteracy of the popular spirit , with Barry Sanders, the Discovery, Paris, 1990.
Of readable with visible, the birth of the text , Stag, Paris, 1991.
In the mirror of the past. Conferences and speech 1978-1990 , Descartes & Co, Paris, 1994.
complete Œuvres Volume 1 , ( Libérer the future - a company without school - User-friendliness - Némésis medical - Énergie and equity ), Fayard, 2004.
complete Œuvres Tome 2 , ( creative Unemployment - phantom Work - the vernacular Kind - H2O, water of the lapse of memory - the readable one with visible - In the mirror of last the ), Fayard, 2005.
the Loss of the directions , Fayard, Paris, 2004.

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