Ivan Illich
About Philia > Sources of Inspiration > Ivan Illich
 Ivan Illich was one of the world's great thinkers, best known for his 1970s polemical writings against western institutions.
Schooled in theology and philosophy, Illich entered the priesthood in the 1940s but eventually resigned from active duty. His intellectual activity in the 1970s and 1980s focused on major institutions of the industrialized world, addressing education (Deschooling Society, 1971), technological development (Tools for Conviviality, 1973), energy, transport and economic development (Energy and Equity, 1974), medicine (Medical Nemesis, 1976) and work (The Right to Useful Unemployment and Its Professional Enemies, 1978, and Shadow Work, 1981). He analyzed the corruption of institutions which, he said, ended up performing the opposite of their original purpose.
In his later years Illich wrote less, partly due to a disfiguring facial cancer for which, true to his beliefs, he never sought treatment, but also because his work became an ongoing conversation with friends around the world. His most lasting legacy may be his effect on the people he touched, and their effects on others.
Ivan Illich died on December 2, 2002.
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