Ivan Illich
Ivan Illich
Ivan Illichwas an Austrian philosopher, Roman Catholic priest, and "maverick social critic" of the institutions of contemporary Western culture and their effects on the provenance and practice of education, medicine, work, energy use, transportation, and economic development...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionSociologist
Date of Birth4 September 1926
CountryUnited States of America
hope expectations difficult-times
We must rediscover the distinction between hope and expectation.
humorous health doctors
Modern medicine is a negation of health. It isn't organized to serve human health, but only itself, as an institution. It makes more people sick than it heals.
teaching school people
School prepares for the alienating institutionalization of life by teaching the need to be taught. Once this lesson is learned, people lose their incentive to grow in independence; they no longer find relatedness attractive, and close themselves off to the surprises which life offers when it is not predetermined by institutional definition.
balance progressive ends
The re-establishment of an ecological balance depends on the ability of society to counteract the progressive materialization of values. The ecological balance cannot be re-established unless we recognize again that only persons have ends and only persons can work towards them.
learning reality information
Learning from programmed information always hides reality behind a screen.
teaching believe results
It is really an alienation to believe that learning is the result of teaching.
teacher school pyramids
Schools are designed on the assumption that there is a secret to everything in life; that the quality of life depends upon knowing that secret; that secrets can only be known in orderly successions; and that only teachers can properly reveal these secrets. An individual with a schooled mind conceives of the world as a pyramid of classified packages accessible only to those who carry the proper tags.
diagnosis problem ethical
The depersonalizati on of diagnosis and therapy has changed malpractice from an ethical into a technical problem.
leadership doe depends
Leadership does not depend on being right.
motivation school opportunity
In schools, including universities, most resources are spent to purchase the time and motivation of a limited number of people to take up predetermined problems in a ritually defined setting. The most radical alternative to school would be a network or service which gave each man the same opportunity to share his current concern with others motivated by the same concern.
technology support choices
The future depends more upon our choice of institutions which support a life of action than on our developing new ideologies and technologies.
new-experiences suffering opaque
The new experience that has replaced dignified suffering is artificially prolonged, opaque, depersonalized maintenance.
pain suffering culture
Culture makes pain tolerable by interpreting it's necessity; only pain perceived as curable is intolerable.
meaningful men circles
Traditional society was more like a set of concentric circles of meaningful structures, while modern man must learn how to find meaning in many structures to which he is only marginally related. In the village, language and architecture and religion and work and family customs were consistent with one another, mutually explanatory and reinforcing. To grow into one implied a growth into others.