"If the expression 'search for truth' provokes a smile in some people and makes them think that I belong to a bygone world, it's no wonder, because that's the way it is." (Last conversations with Ivan Illich, p. 205). Perhaps the affirmation that the concern for truth passes through the loss of familiarity with the present explains the bewilderment and admiration that the thought of the atypical Ivan Illich arouses.
Thinkers such as Giorgio Agamben, Michel Foucault and Eric Fromm have found inspiration and new perspectives in his analysis. More recently, the prestigious Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor, did not hesitate to refer to Illich as a "great voice on the margins" comparable to Nietzsche: "Illich offers a new roadmap [...], and does so simply without falling into the clichés of anti-modernism." (Last conversations with Ivan Illichpp. 14 and 18).
The son of a Dalmatian and Catholic father and an Austrian and Jewish mother, Illich was born in Vienna on September 4, 1926. Fleeing the Third Reich, his family settles in Italy in 1942. Over the next nine years, Illich studied crystallography at the University of Florence and, in Rome, philosophy and theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University; he also earned a doctorate in medieval history at the University of Salzburg.
After being ordained a priest in 1951, he left for New York, where he lived until 1960. His pastoral work with the Puerto Rican community in this city - in particular, the need to train men and women of the Church who were fluent in Spanish and understood the customs and traditions of the new immigrants - inspired him to establish the Intercultural Training Center (CIF), which will later be transformed into the Intercultural Documentation Center (CIDOC), in Cuernavaca, Mexico.
The doors of CIDOC will remain open until 1976. As a result of his research and discussions in Cuernavaca, Illich will publish during the seventies what he will call, with great success, his "pamphlets", the books that have brought him the most fame and that have portrayed him for posterity as a critic of industrialization and development ideology. His best known titles are The unschooled society (1970), Conviviality (1973), Energy and equity (1973) y Medical Nemesis (1975).
The strength of Illich's critique of industrialization lies in its simplicity: "When an initiative exceeds a certain threshold [...], it will first destroy the purpose for which it was conceived and then become a threat to society itself." (Conviviality, p. 50).
Beyond a certain limit, for example, the automobile only multiplies the kilometers it had originally promised to reduce and, by then, motor propulsion has already mutated and established itself as the only valid mode of transportation. "Such a process of growth places man before a misplaced demand: to find satisfaction in submission to the logic of the tool." (p. 113).
Illich identifies similar dynamics in contemporary educational and health systems. The automobile deprives people of the political capacity to walk, as much as the modern hospital deprives them of their capacity to heal and suffer, and the school - transformed into an agent of a universal, homogenizing education - of their right to learn. Such deprivations in turn generate unforeseeable perverse effects.
One of them is the figure of the "user", the most finished product of industrialization. This sort of tourist in his own life "lives in a world alien to that of people endowed with the autonomy of its members". (Collected Works I, p. 338). By using tools that he does not understand, the user is simply incapable of mastering them. Alongside him appear the expert -who knows, controls and decides on the technology- and the marginalized -who, lacking the resources to afford it, cannot realize himself in an industrialized society. Left to its own logic, industrialization generates radical dependence and inequality.
In the face of industrial excess, Illich recommends the conviviality: "I call convivial society that in which the modern tool is at the service of the person integrated in the community and not at the service of a body of specialists". (p. 374).
Just as energy consumption should not exceed metabolic limits, the correct use of any technology should always be austere: "Austerity is part of a virtue that is more fragile, that surpasses and encompasses it: joy, eutrapelia, friendship" (Collected Works I, p. 374).
In all his books, Illich details how a real alternative to the Western industrial model could be envisaged. He also points out the risks, both psychological and structural, that such an alternative entails, however necessary and utopian it may be.
For the time being, it should be noted that Illich's political proposal, of a realism attentive to the capabilities of each person, could be summarized in two words: energy y friendship.
Illich himself recognizes that his peculiar realism is rooted in the mystery and reality of the Incarnation. It should also be added that it has its roots in a certain Thomistic tradition: at the end of his days, he still referred to Jacques Maritain as his teacher.
Although he left the priesthood in 1969 to avoid being a source of division within and outside the Church, Illich never renounced his faith, freely and deeply lived, and his love for the great medieval authors. In fact, his last book, In the vineyard of the text (1993), is dedicated to Hugo de San Victor. As Taylor summarizes well, "this message comes from a certain theology, but it should be heard by all". (Last conversations with Ivan Illich, p. 18).
