An Invitation to Ivan Illich

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Illich notes that today people ?surrender themselves to atrocious debaucheries of images and representations in order not to see.? In an age that denies death and deforms reality, simple acts of kindness, personal relations bound by friendship, are celebrations of sense ? the embrace, the kiss, the face-to-face conversation ? in a sense-less world of artificial intelligence and electronic communities.

In 1973, the same year Allende died, the same year he bought those shoes, Illich published Tools for Conviviality. In his introduction, Illich clearly states his belief in the importance of friendship and its crucial component, self-limitation: Today, the idea of ?austerity? has ?been degraded and has acquired a bitter taste,? he notes, but for Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas it gave rise to the ?disciplined and creative playfulness? that formed the foundation of friendship. He argues with Aquinas that austerity is a ?virtue which does not exclude all enjoyments, but only those which are distracting from or destructive of personal relatedness.? In this sense, friendship and self-limitation are inextricable halves of the good life.

But self-limitation as Illich understands it is in direct opposition to currently fashionable ideas like self-help, self-management, or even responsibility for oneself and the environment (all of which he dismissively calls ?liberation psychology?). One doesn?t renounce gas-guzzling cars or nuclear power in response to ecomail that solicits funds while it encourages ?sustainable development? of the ?global community? (oxymorons to Illich). One doesn?t embrace a circumscribed lifestyle, a ?convivial? life in which individual freedom is realized in personal inter-dependence, out of an abstract sense of ?responsibility? or an imposed ?ought,? but because one wants to stand with those who speak, simply, of decency.

This sense of friendship has been the guiding principle in much of Illich?s writing, just as it has been a guiding force in his life. At times, it has been the cause of apparent contradictions, as his philosophy confronts the day to day: For example, at a friend?s request for his presence Illich will get on a plane ? something he condemns in his writing on transportation. Or he will use a microphone, out of friendship, though he despises the way it destroys the intimacy with his audience.

In the end, what drives Illich is deep fellow feeling and a drive to explain a few last things, even as pain from a large growth on the side of his face ? which he refuses to have diagnosed or treated by what he views as an inhumane medical industry ? transforms his days into an endurance test.

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