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Ivan Illich’s radical critique of modern certitudes (2021)

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Re: Ivan Illich’s radical critique of modern certitudes (2021)

#11

Post by ttoinou »

bmj wrote: post #8
stanislavb wrote: post #2

Has anyone read any of his books? What do you think?

I've read a handful, and agree that he truly understood the effects of technology and Modernity. It's worth reading the French sociologist/theologian Jacques Ellul, too (they were contemporaries).

I like Ellul unfortunately he is much more cloudy in his statements and analysis, it takes much more energy to decipher (even in French) and make your own what he's saying.

I'd rather recommend reading basics stuff like Guy Debord (Society of Spectacle), André Gorz (Métamorphoses du travail), Schumacher (Small is Beautiful), Kohr (The Breakdown of Nations). A little bit of Bourdieu cannot hurt either

Re: Ivan Illich’s radical critique of modern certitudes (2021)

#13

Post by palata »

> In his words, “By breaching the limits set on man by nature and history, industrial society engendered disability and suffering in the name of eliminating disability and suffering. … The warming biosphere is making it intolerable to think of industrial growth as progress; now it appears to us as aggression against the human condition.”

This resonates with me.

Re: Ivan Illich’s radical critique of modern certitudes (2021)

#14

Post by code51 »

stanislavb wrote: post #2

Has anyone read any of his books? What do you think?

I think Deschooling Society is a great read, gets the problem with schools and education right.

However it fails to offer a compelling solution. Why? Because it fails to address the complexity of modern day subjects to learn.

Re: Ivan Illich’s radical critique of modern certitudes (2021)

#15

Post by spinfz »

stanislavb wrote: post #2

Has anyone read any of his books? What do you think?

I guess a great starting point would be "Ivan Illich in Conversation" by David Cayley, which is basically an exhaustive interview with Illich that touches on almost every different stage of his ideas.

Re: Ivan Illich’s radical critique of modern certitudes (2021)

#16

Post by high_5 »

bmj wrote: post #8
stanislavb wrote: post #2

Has anyone read any of his books? What do you think?

I've read a handful, and agree that he truly understood the effects of technology and Modernity. It's worth reading the French sociologist/theologian Jacques Ellul, too (they were contemporaries).

I think it would be also worthy of note they were also both Christians, albeit quite unorthodox in their thinking.

Re: Ivan Illich’s radical critique of modern certitudes (2021)

#18

Post by ttoinou »

bmj wrote: post #10
ttoinou wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read 90% of them yeah. It's amazing. If you like the free software movement, Tools for Conviviality is a must read. But my favorite is Deschooling Society He defines his own terms throughout his bibliography and everything makes so much sense put together (you can apply his logic to the health system, language, knowledge through written books, industrial society, education, gender vs. sex etc.). He didn't tried to ma…

>Weirdly, only left wing people read him. But he's actually quite libertarian compatible. There are quite a few on the Right that read Illich as well. He was, essentially, a communitarian anarchist. Some of his thought is well-received on the Right, particularly his critique of institutionalized education and medicine.

Interesting, I've never read about that. Who are those people ? Unless you mean people forming Kibbutz, then yeah

Re: Ivan Illich’s radical critique of modern certitudes (2021)

#19

Post by dang »

Related. Others?

Silence Is a Commons (1983) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28431541 - Sept 2021 (17 comments)

Silence Is a Commons (1983) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26007100 - Feb 2021 (31 comments)

Deschooling Society (1970) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23821855 - July 2020 (195 comments)

Deschooling Society - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21578620 - Nov 2019 (1 comment)

Tools for Conviviality (1973) [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21512587 - Nov 2019 (6 comments)

Deschooling Society - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13408250 - Jan 2017 (1 comment)

Silence is a Commons (1983) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5402711 - March 2013 (2 comments)

Deschooling Society - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=285107 - Aug 2008 (45 comments)

A vision of social networking from 1971 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=257094 - July 2008 (1 comment)

Edit: a bunch of comments from other threads too - https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Re: Ivan Illich’s radical critique of modern certitudes (2021)

#20

Post by nonrandomstring »

ttoinou wrote: post #11
bmj wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've read a handful, and agree that he truly understood the effects of technology and Modernity. It's worth reading the French sociologist/theologian Jacques Ellul, too (they were contemporaries).

I like Ellul unfortunately he is much more cloudy in his statements and analysis, it takes much more energy to decipher (even in French) and make your own what he's saying. I'd rather recommend reading basics stuff like Guy Debord (Society of Spectacle), André Gorz (Métamorphoses du travail), Schumacher (Small is Beautiful), Kohr (The Breakdown of Nations). A little bit of Bourdieu cannot hurt either

Mumford and Postman also expand that list.

Of Illich I've only fully read "Tools for Conviviality", which I'd say is a manifesto for Humane Technology of a kind.

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