A Voice for Conviviality
Remembering Ivan Illich (1926-2002)
-By Jerry Brown, Utne magazine
March / April 2003 Issue
ON DECEMBER 2 in Bremen, Germany, priest and historian Monsignor Ivan Illich died in peace. He was taking a brief nap on a couch in the home of his friend Barbara Duden. Three months earlier, Ivan and I and two of his closest friends shared the pleasures of walking through the streets of Florence, Italy. We enjoyed a leisurely meal in a small, typically Tuscan restaurant. Laughter and Chianti flowed freely. As I got up to pay the bill, Ivan had already taken care of it.
Among the serious thinkers I have had the privilege to meet, Ivan Illich alone embodied in his life and work a profound critique of modern values. From Deschooling Society (1971) to In the Vineyard of the Text (1993), he bore witness to the destructive power of modern institutions that "create needs faster than they can create satisfaction, and in the process of trying to meet the needs they generate, they consume the earth."
Ivan Illich was unique: erudite, yet possessed of aliveness and sensitivity. He savored the ordinary pleasures of life even as he cheerfully embraced its inevitable suffering. Steeped in the authentic Christian tradition of pilgrim (he had no home, sharing only the hospitality of his friends and traveling from place to place with never more than two bags), he was able to understand the unforgiving allure of science and progress. With acute clarity and sense of irony, he undermined, in all that he wrote, the uncontested certitudes of modern society.
During his last visit to Oakland, he invited the local archbishop to discuss corruption in the early church and the evolution-as he saw it-of Christian charity from a personal act to planned institutional service. His interlocutors arrived at my loft and were ushered into the library. Illich spoke at length, but the bishop and his clerical assistants seemed non-plussed, even uncomfortable. I am sure they were wondering what in the world Illich was getting at.
Two days after Illich died, The New York Times printed an obituary that was a polemic rather than a serious remembrance. The writer described Illich as a preacher of "counterintuitive sociology" to "a disquieted baby-boom generation," using "Jesuitic argumentation" and "watered-down Marxism." He also quoted a deceased Times literary critic who in 1989 said that he would "especially" discard Illich's books from his personal library.
Given Illich's frontal assault on the status quo, it is not surprising that America's newspaper of record would so interpret his life and work. One can't attack, as he cheerfully did, schooling, medicine, even the "pursuit of health," transportation, and economic development and still earn approbation. Like the prophets before him, Illich is not easily accepted.
In the 1970s, facing sharp criticism from the Vatican, Illich withdrew from the active ministry and refrained from speaking ever again as a Catholic theologian. Instead, he focused on the pervasive institutions of modern society. Here he found not the triumph of progress, but the servitude of addiction and envy. Instead of welfare economics and environmental management, Illich emphasized the virtues of friendship and self-limitation.
At first, Illich offered trenchant social criticism, particularly in Tools for Conviviality (1973) and Medical Nemesis (1976). In later years, he turned his attention inward and to what one of his friends called a new way of doing theology. In an essay titled "The Cultivation of Conspiracy," Illich wrote: "I remain certain that the quest for truth cannot thrive outside the nourishment of mutual trust flowering into a commitment to friendship."
In the last 20 years of his life, Ivan Illich suffered increasingly from a persistent growth on the side of his face, which he never treated, nor had diagnosed. In explaining why he voluntarily suffered, he said simply, quoting Saint Jerome: "Nudus Christum nudum sequere"-naked I follow the naked Christ.
In what was his most provocative and perhaps final comment on the "pursuit of health," Illich wrote: "Yes, we suffer pain, we become ill, we die. But we also hope, laugh, celebrate; we know the joy of caring for one another; often we are healed and we recover by many means. We do not have to pursue the flattening-out of human experience. I invite all to shift their gaze, their thoughts, from worrying about health care to cultivating the art of living. And, today with equal importance, the art of suffering, the art of dying."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
While serving as professor in architecture at Penn State in the College of Arts and Architecture, I had been told of the presence of Ivan Illich on the campus. Since I had read Tools of Conviviality, and Deschooling Society, I was interested in meeting him. Someone along the way told me that he was very ill; and that he could be recognized by an enlargement on the cheek of his face. While visiting a local book store, I immediately recognized him, and introduced myself. I also begged him to attend to his medical problem without success: Not to do so was actually part of his philosophy. Professor Illich was involved with campus-wide teaching/learning in philosophy. (At around the same time, I had the opportunity to offer a graduate course for architecture students in the relationship between classical philosophy and architecture. The course involved a seminar with philosopher-specialists in the philosophy department. We learned the relationship between architecture and philosophy was contrived, and really not a very truthful one.) I was able to attend several of his campus-wide involvements. He was a very intense and good man. He is missed by many. To give one's life in such a way to others is a great accomplishment.
.H.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
The Design-L list for art and architecture, since 1992...
To subscribe, send mailto:design-l-subscribe-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx.
To signoff, send mailto:design-l-unsubscribe-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx.
Visit archives: http://lists.psu.edu/archives/design-l.html
Remembering Ivan Illich (1926-2002)
-By Jerry Brown, Utne magazine
March / April 2003 Issue
ON DECEMBER 2 in Bremen, Germany, priest and historian Monsignor Ivan Illich died in peace. He was taking a brief nap on a couch in the home of his friend Barbara Duden. Three months earlier, Ivan and I and two of his closest friends shared the pleasures of walking through the streets of Florence, Italy. We enjoyed a leisurely meal in a small, typically Tuscan restaurant. Laughter and Chianti flowed freely. As I got up to pay the bill, Ivan had already taken care of it.
Among the serious thinkers I have had the privilege to meet, Ivan Illich alone embodied in his life and work a profound critique of modern values. From Deschooling Society (1971) to In the Vineyard of the Text (1993), he bore witness to the destructive power of modern institutions that "create needs faster than they can create satisfaction, and in the process of trying to meet the needs they generate, they consume the earth."
Ivan Illich was unique: erudite, yet possessed of aliveness and sensitivity. He savored the ordinary pleasures of life even as he cheerfully embraced its inevitable suffering. Steeped in the authentic Christian tradition of pilgrim (he had no home, sharing only the hospitality of his friends and traveling from place to place with never more than two bags), he was able to understand the unforgiving allure of science and progress. With acute clarity and sense of irony, he undermined, in all that he wrote, the uncontested certitudes of modern society.
During his last visit to Oakland, he invited the local archbishop to discuss corruption in the early church and the evolution-as he saw it-of Christian charity from a personal act to planned institutional service. His interlocutors arrived at my loft and were ushered into the library. Illich spoke at length, but the bishop and his clerical assistants seemed non-plussed, even uncomfortable. I am sure they were wondering what in the world Illich was getting at.
Two days after Illich died, The New York Times printed an obituary that was a polemic rather than a serious remembrance. The writer described Illich as a preacher of "counterintuitive sociology" to "a disquieted baby-boom generation," using "Jesuitic argumentation" and "watered-down Marxism." He also quoted a deceased Times literary critic who in 1989 said that he would "especially" discard Illich's books from his personal library.
Given Illich's frontal assault on the status quo, it is not surprising that America's newspaper of record would so interpret his life and work. One can't attack, as he cheerfully did, schooling, medicine, even the "pursuit of health," transportation, and economic development and still earn approbation. Like the prophets before him, Illich is not easily accepted.
In the 1970s, facing sharp criticism from the Vatican, Illich withdrew from the active ministry and refrained from speaking ever again as a Catholic theologian. Instead, he focused on the pervasive institutions of modern society. Here he found not the triumph of progress, but the servitude of addiction and envy. Instead of welfare economics and environmental management, Illich emphasized the virtues of friendship and self-limitation.
At first, Illich offered trenchant social criticism, particularly in Tools for Conviviality (1973) and Medical Nemesis (1976). In later years, he turned his attention inward and to what one of his friends called a new way of doing theology. In an essay titled "The Cultivation of Conspiracy," Illich wrote: "I remain certain that the quest for truth cannot thrive outside the nourishment of mutual trust flowering into a commitment to friendship."
In the last 20 years of his life, Ivan Illich suffered increasingly from a persistent growth on the side of his face, which he never treated, nor had diagnosed. In explaining why he voluntarily suffered, he said simply, quoting Saint Jerome: "Nudus Christum nudum sequere"-naked I follow the naked Christ.
In what was his most provocative and perhaps final comment on the "pursuit of health," Illich wrote: "Yes, we suffer pain, we become ill, we die. But we also hope, laugh, celebrate; we know the joy of caring for one another; often we are healed and we recover by many means. We do not have to pursue the flattening-out of human experience. I invite all to shift their gaze, their thoughts, from worrying about health care to cultivating the art of living. And, today with equal importance, the art of suffering, the art of dying."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
While serving as professor in architecture at Penn State in the College of Arts and Architecture, I had been told of the presence of Ivan Illich on the campus. Since I had read Tools of Conviviality, and Deschooling Society, I was interested in meeting him. Someone along the way told me that he was very ill; and that he could be recognized by an enlargement on the cheek of his face. While visiting a local book store, I immediately recognized him, and introduced myself. I also begged him to attend to his medical problem without success: Not to do so was actually part of his philosophy. Professor Illich was involved with campus-wide teaching/learning in philosophy. (At around the same time, I had the opportunity to offer a graduate course for architecture students in the relationship between classical philosophy and architecture. The course involved a seminar with philosopher-specialists in the philosophy department. We learned the relationship between architecture and philosophy was contrived, and really not a very truthful one.) I was able to attend several of his campus-wide involvements. He was a very intense and good man. He is missed by many. To give one's life in such a way to others is a great accomplishment.
.H.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
The Design-L list for art and architecture, since 1992...
To subscribe, send mailto:design-l-subscribe-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx.
To signoff, send mailto:design-l-unsubscribe-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx.
Visit archives: http://lists.psu.edu/archives/design-l.html