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As a continuation of its exploration of human relationships to place and to each other, the Camden Philosophical Society on Tuesday, April 15, will discuss selected readings from mid-20th Century philosopher and social critic Ivan Illich – an Austrian priest with Dalmatian roots who spent substantial parts of his life in Mexica, the US, and Germany. Illich provides a somewhat more controversial and, in many ways, less compromising analysis of the crisis in modern society than others whose works the society has read and discussed recently.
The April 15 session will, as usual, be a hybrid gathering from 3:30-5:30 pm EDT on the third Tuesday of the month. All are welcome to participate, in-person at the Picker Room of the Camden Public Library or by Zoom. That goes for visitors, as well as year-rounders in Maine, and friends of the society wherever you may be.
If you wish to participate via Zoom, please email sarahmiller@usa.net. You will receive a Zoom invitation on the morning of the meeting. Click on the “Join Zoom Meeting” link in that invitation at the time of the event.
In Illich’s view, the industrialization/bureaucratization of tools has undermined our ability to exist sustainably within our environment. By tools, Illich includes everything from power tools, automobiles, and airplanes to schools, hospitals, and language. For him, these tools (industrialized/bureaucratized) imprison, rather than liberate us. We work for them instead of them working for or with us. From birth to death, we move along the conveyor belt of predetermined inputs that stifle our creative approaches to solving the contemporary problems that, by the way, modern society has both defined and created. Problems such as loneliness, poverty, and pollution, to name a few.
Illich’s alternative to the industrial/bureaucratic path is the “convivial.” To implement this change, he calls for the replacement of industrial/bureaucratic tools with “tools for conviviality.”
In order to explore how Illich defined the coming crisis and what he meant by tools for conviviality, we will base our discussion on the first 15 pages of Section II (Convivial Reconstruction, pp. 23-37), and Section V (Political Inversion, pp. 115-125) of his book Tools for Conviviality (1975). The book is available for free online here: https://monoskop.org/images/3/3e/Illich_Ivan_Tools_for_Conviviality_1975.pdf
And also on a conversation between Illich and journalist Nathan Gardels reprinted as “The Shadow that the Future Throws” (1989). https://www.davidtinapple.com/illich/1989_shadow_future.PDF
A large selection of Ivan Illich’s published writings can be found on David Tinapple’s website
https://www.davidtinapple.com/illich/