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Ivan Dominic Illich was an Austrian Catholic priest, theologian, philosopher, and social critic. His 1971 book Deschooling Society criticises modern society's institutional approach to education, an approach that he argued demotivates and alienates individuals from the process of learning. His 1975 book Medical Nemesis, importing to the sociology of medicine the concept of medical harm, in which h…
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culture · Austrian Catholic priest and philosopher (1926–2002) · Catholic priest · historian · pedagogue · philosopher · literary critic · anthropologist · writer · sociologist · theologian · priest · also Ivan Illich, Ivan D. Illich, Ivan Dominic Illich, Illich
Born 4 September 1926 · Died 2 December 2002 · Q84186
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“she realised that the soul of this free, independent and powerless thinkery would have been squashed by its rising influence... [a positive] atmosphere invites the institutionalisation which will corrupt it”
JSTOR Daily: Ivan Illich: An Intellectual Journey
Australian Broadcasting Corporation: “Cultivating the art of living”: What I learned from Ivan Illich about friendship, discipline, and celebrating the present
America Magazine: What Pope Francis and Ivan Illich prioritize in common: Anti-clericalism, the Global South and the cry of the poor
The American Conservative: How I Learned Ivan Illich Was Right
National Review: Ivan Illich’s New-Old Vision for the Future of Education
The San Diego Union-Tribune: Ivan Illich Memoriam
Died 2002-12-02.
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Awarded Kultur- und Friedenspreis der Villa Ichon (1998).
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“The Cultivation of Conspiracy”
Awarded honorary doctorate from University of Paris-XI (1976).
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Reportedly concerned by the influx of formal academics and the potential side effects of its own "institutionalization", Illich shut the center down with consent from the other members of the CIDOC
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Also known as Limits to Medicine, Illich subjected contemporary Western medicine to detailed attack
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Was a critique of compulsory mass education
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Was his call for advanced technology to support "learning webs":
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Originally as a missionary training center
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As the result of a controversy involving bishops James Edward McManus and James Peter Davis, who had denounced Governor Luis Muñoz Marín and his Popular Democratic Party for their positions in favor of birth control and
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Traveled throughout South America on foot and by bus
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At the age of 30, he was appointed vice-rector of the Catholic University of Puerto Rico, "a position he managed to keep for several years before getting thrown out—Illich was just a little too loud in his criticism of t
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Moved to the United States in order to pursue postgraduate studies at Princeton University
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As a twenty-six-year-old man newly arrived in New York, I went to a public debate
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Was ordained as a Catholic priest in Rome and offered his first Mass in the catacombs where the early Roman Christians hid from their persecutors
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After his grandfather's death, when Ivan was 16 years old, his mother fled with him and his brothers from Vienna, Austria for Florence, Italy, to escape the Nazi persecution of Jews
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His parents divorced, and his mother took all three children back to her father's house in Vienna
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His twin brothers Alexander and Michael, were born
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Born 1926-09-04.
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