Ivan Illich
1926-2002 · Human Sciences · Prominent
Illich was a Roman Catholic priest and historian who argued that tools remake the people who use them. Past a certain point each tool starts producing the opposite of what it promised: schools that block learning, transport that eats more time than it saves, medicine that damages health. He read the pattern in theological terms, as the corruption of the best, and treated modern life as the Gospel gone wrong rather than the Gospel refused.
Signature
The position Illich is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Nature
- leans Harmony
- Ethics Basis
- Relational
Positions on the 5 axes the sources answer
- Society
- leans Collectivism (25 on a 0–100 scale from Collectivism to Individualism)
- Beauty
- leans Objective (81 on a 0–100 scale from Subjective to Objective)
- Meaning
- strongly leans Inherent (92 on a 0–100 scale from Constructed to Inherent)
- Ground of Being
- leans Transcendence (83 on a 0–100 scale from Immanence to Transcendence)
- Nature
- leans Harmony (86 on a 0–100 scale from Mastery to Harmony)
15 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Illich refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Trinitarian Monotheism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Highest Good
- Love
What is the highest good? - Good and Evil
- Good Real, Evil Privative
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - Perception
- Embodied Perception
What do we directly perceive? - Ethics Basis
- Relational
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Economy
- Subsistence Economy
What is the ideal organization of economic life? - Law
- Customary Law
What is the ultimate source of legitimate law? - Human Nature
- Imago Dei
What is human nature? - Primary Bond
- Friends
What is your primary bond and loyalty?