Ivan Illich Philosophy of Tools

Ivan Illich's "philosophy of tools can help us imagine a technology-friendly tomorrow that enhances human life, instead of enslaving it with addictive games and narcissistic mirrors."

Read @BrianAcity in @firstthingsmag https://t.co/eE4aDia9c3

— Manhattan Institute (@ManhattanInst) January 18, 2022

David Bollier Interviews David Cayley

"He belongs to a school of political ecology in which I would give E.F. Schumacher a very proud place..."

- David Cayley in conversation with @DavidBollier on the legacy of thinker Ivan Illich. (Listen via the link below or the usual podcast platforms)https://t.co/TaPxoBUC6F

— Schumacher Center for a New Economics (@Center4NewEcon) December 7, 2021

David Cayley on Non-Vax Passports

Even a fraction of the rhetorical fury spewed at “anti-vaxxers” would be hate speech were it directed at any protected class.https://t.co/Gvj8l9bPFC

— First Things (@firstthingsmag) September 17, 2021

FPR Interview with David Cayley

Canadian radio broadcaster David Cayley pulls up a chair to discuss Ivan Illich, a renegade priest and professor who argued against schools, missionaries, and modern medicine. https://t.co/9vYuDLK7HS pic.twitter.com/ujyJvb5okP

— Front Porch Republic (@FrontPorchRepub) July 6, 2021

A Discussion of Ivan Illich

Episode 86: Grace and Danger, Series 2, #1 Ivan Illich's insights on how government and large institutions impede beauty spontaneous order in society https://t.co/2q2qxypwZF

— David Clayton (@pontifexbeauty) May 20, 2021

David Cayley on COVID19

“Perhaps we have been afraid of the wrong things.”

I am in awe of the writing and thinking of David Cayley. This essay on #COVID19 captures everything we ought to be talking about. https://t.co/sk7h5CIo0t

— John Mandrola, MD (@drjohnm) October 18, 2020

David Cayley on Ivan Illich

Learn more about this formidable intellectual and about his compelling critique of modern medical institutions in our great conversation with David Cayley. https://t.co/OL8Eu32LSe

— The Accad & Koka Report (@Accad_Koka) October 16, 2020

Accad and Koka Report Ep 150

If Ivan Illich were pope... his encyclicals would probably better make the points that Francis is trying to make AND be unambiguously Christian. I'd still have the same objections to Latin claims about Roman primacy, but I'd read Ivan Illich's Christian encyclicals.

Ivan Illich

The Convivial Society, Vol. 1, No. 14https://t.co/iZ7gnX6Ueq

— LM Sacasas (@LMSacasas) August 26, 2020

Hrm?

An anarchist perspective? Or just an alternative one?

🎥: Psychiatry, Abolition, And New Horizons. A webinar with Elliott Fukui.

via NEC member @fireweedHJ https://t.co/b8sPonhB5n

— NewEconomyCoalition (@NewEconomics) August 9, 2020

Psychiatry, Abolition, and New Horizons from Fireweed Collective on Vimeo.

Educing Ivan Illich: Reform, Contingency and Disestablishment by John Baldacchino

Peter Lang

Do We Have Accountability Between Bishops and Theologians?

I will someday have to look through Ivan Illich's corpus of writings on power disparity as applied to the institutional Church.

Most of what is put forth in the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church (a Latin document, which I can't repeat enough) is not divinely revealed precepts (either through Tradition or the Natural Law), but moral theology, as the Compendium itself admits. No bishop becomes automatically competent in moral theology simply by being consecrated a bishop; and whatever authority he possesses in that field will depend on the state of his knowledge of moral theology and the soundness of his reasoning, not his possession of Holy Orders. Just because he is a bishop doesn't mean that his moral theological opinions are sound or that they have authoritative weight by virtue of his being a bishop. What would have authoritative weight is his presentation of divinely revealed precepts or commandments, and even this must be tested as it is not an innate form of knowledge but handed from one generation to the next. Any "new" precepts must be established or demonstrated from precepts that are known, and this is the task of moral theology -- there is no new "Divine Revelation" as such, though this may be considered a legitimate development of doctrine.

The Latins Need Ivan Illich

They did not deserve him while he was alive; probably they still do not deserve him now. His critiques are applicable to many of the Orthodox jurisdictions as well.

Ivan Illich, a Philosopher For Our Times by Mark Sunwall

Illich was aware that there are indeed institutions which are primarily dedicated to their functions, however he pointed out that beyond certain levels of scale and entrenchment, whatever remains of their functionality becomes secondary to the enhancement of power, wealth, and status. As a Catholic Christian Illich was probably aware of Acton’s saying that “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”, but regardless, the principle itself was a touchstone of his own understanding of institutions. Illich was and is a helpful thinker since he understood that the injustices of modern institutions were seldom carried out as extensions of naked tyranny. Rather they are typically cloaked with the trappings of benevolence and progress, the toxic effects of which only become observable in the long run.

The clerical sex scandal and its fallout should have been a revelation of how out of touch many of the bishops are, and how there is a manifest lack of accountability to their flocks. After 1800 years of the ecclesial status quo, will it be possible for Latins to reconsider their ecclesiological presuppositions? When the gap between how things are now and how they are should be are so large, can there be any sort of reform that seems "gradual"? Having individual parishes incorporate as separate entities may be one measure, but it does not go far enough.

Surely few of Illich’s original fans would ever consider In the Vinyard of the Text the apex of his work.  After all, in the revolutionary ’60s it would not have been considered “relevant.”   Yet in taking up themes from the middle ages and Scholasticism (granted the many limitations of the latter) Illich was expanding “conviviality” from a social bond limited to the present, to a mystical conversation binding together the present, past, and future.  In other words, he was coming out in favor of tradition and the inheritance which the present receives from the past.  If that isn’t the earmark of a conservative thinker I don’t know what is.  Moreover I doubt that this was a novel turn in Illich’s thought, but rather the public revelation of a deep strata of his mind which had long been obscured by his active engagement with the hot-button issues of his times.

Illich may have seemed like a radical thinker, but he may have seemed radical because his calls for reform were inline with the requirements of preaching and living the Gospel, and his critics failed to realize this.

The Illich-McCarrick Connection

From a Berkeley Center interview with Theodore McCarrick: A Discussion with Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, Archbishop Emeritus of Washington, D.C.

Nobody knew quite where studying sociology would take me. The famous philosopher, Monsignor Ivan Illich, had urged me to focus on sociology. He was a great scholar, a genius. He was like “a river without banks,” as someone once described him to me. He later left the ministry, and yet he had an influence on Latin American thought in a very special way. Some said, “Go and study sociology as an academic discipline so you can go teach in the seminary.” And others said, “Go and look at it as a research tool, so you can work in the chancery.” And others said, “You can build on sociology as a means of working with the poor, and then you can come and work with Catholic Charities.” And ultimately, I tried to do all three.

Not a very big connection.

Lacking the Red Pill

Gender is a Social Construct by Christopher Shannon


This is why the complete red pill is important. While Shannon is correct that there are subjective and conventional aspects of distinction of sex roles, he misses out what effect expanding women's roles in society has on hypergamy and their evaluation of men.
In their own way, co-ed Catholic liberal arts colleges are part of the problem, even if their female graduates tend to marry early. Instead of acquiring an education in the domestic arts, they have a liberal education which may be useful for homeschooling, but the possession of the credential will have an effect on hypergamy.

A women's economic roles are subordinate or in tandem with her role as wife and mother -- the modern industrial capitalist economy has doomed itself by its adoption of cheap fossil fuel energy as a principle, and the rebuilding of civilization will not be a pretty process.

Mark Bauerlein and Sanjay Samuel on Ivan Illich

First Things: Ivan Illich and the "Powerlessness of the Church"

1996 Interview with Ivan Illich

The Freelance Teacher

Where is Ivan Illich When We Need Him?

Neglected by bishops to the detriment of the patriarchate of Rome.

We should advocate for the rights of indigenous peoples everywhere including those in the West, not just those affected by the West and other industrial powers.


Christian Liberal Democracy, Catholic Welfare State

ICA: Why Read: Ivan Illich’s The Right to Useful Unemployment and its Professional Enemies?

As he aims to achieve a more ‘convivial society,’ Illich unpacks the concept of ‘modernized poverty’ as an oppositional factor. With the exception of the mega-rich, who can disappear into luxury, he understands everyone else as living in conditions of ‘modernized poverty.’ Within this, the proliferation and dominance of commodities prevents any autonomous living, culturally shaped use-value, and subsequently renders satisfaction outside of market-relations impossible. He instead suggests a method of ‘convivial austerity,’ where people would put a limit on the maximum amount of power that anyone could hold, re-activating the possibility for personal use-value.

Deschooling

Infed: Ivan Illich: deschooling, conviviality and lifelong learning

Related:
Deschooling for all?

Jesuits Need to Read Ivan Illich

Can getting a higher education benefit entire communities and even countries ? Jesuit Fr. Michael Garanzini, Secretary...

Posted by Vatican Radio - English Section on Tuesday, June 16, 2015