Book description
A work of seminal importance, this book presents Ivan Illich's
penetrating analysis of the industrial mode of production which
characterises our contemporary world. The conviviality for which noted
social philosopher Ivan Illich is arguing is one in which the
individual's personal energies are under direct personal control and in
which the use of tools is responsibly limited. This book claims out
attention for the urgency of its appeal, the stunning clarity of its
logic and the overwhelmingly human note that it sounds.
Ivan Illich was born in Vienna to a Croatian father and Sephardic-Jewish
mother, and had as native languages Italian, French and German. He later
learnt Serbo-Croatian, the language of his grand-fathers, then Ancient
Greek and Latin, as well as Spanish, Portuguese and Hindi. Thereafter,
he studied histology and crystallography at the University of Florence
(Italy), theology and philosophy at the Pontifical Gregorian University
in the Vatican (1942-1946) and medieval history in Salzburg. He is the
author of Tools for Conviviality, The Right to Useful Unemployment,
Energy and Equity, Limits to Medicine, Shadow Work, Gender, H2O and the
Waters of Forgetfulness, ABC: The Alphabetization of the Popular Mind,
Deschooling Society and In the Mirror of the Past: Lectures and
Addresses 1978-1990. Illich lived much of his life in Mexico and the
United States, he died in 2002.
