Ivan Illich
died in Bremen on December 2, 2002 at the age of seventy–six. As a German
friend of his put it: “God gave him a beautiful death.” Illich suddenly
collapsed while at work in his study and died immediately. The New York Times obituary noted, quite
correctly, that Illich’s influence was long past. A young colleague to whom I
mentioned his passing, for example, had never heard of him. But the stature of
a man must not be measured by the shifting winds of fashion. At one time Illich
had been an important figure in the intellectual world—no less than in my life.

Illich
was born in Vienna, the son of a Croatian father and a German–Jewish mother. He
studied in Salzburg and in Rome, finished with a doctorate in history, and was
ordained as a Roman Catholic priest. Contrary to what many people assumed, he
wanted it known that he had never ceased to be a priest. He did not write about
theology, but his thought and his piety were marked by a very conservative
Catholicism. Once, when he was sick, I visited him in his bedroom in
Cuernavaca. It was spartan, reminiscent of a monastic cell. Over his bed hung
an enormous crucifix.

Illich
moved to New York in 1951, serving in a largely Latino parish. In 1956 he
became vice–rector of the Catholic University of Puerto Rico, where he got into
trouble with the local hierarchy because he criticized the role of the Church
in Puerto Rican politics. In 1960 he moved to Cuernavaca, Mexico, where he
founded the institution that served as his base for many years—the Centro
Intercultural de Documentación (CIDOC). It was a most unusual place. Located on
an attractive rented estate, it was a think tank bringing together for lectures
and innumerable conversations a highly heterogeneous group of bright people—North
and Latin Americans, Europeans, Catholics and non–Catholics, from the left and
the right. CIDOC had no outside funding. It sustained itself in an uncommon
way—by operating a very successful program of instruction in Spanish, charging
the usual rates for this kind of activity.

Illich
wrote and published continuously. His book Celebration
of Awareness: A Call for Institutional Revolution (1969) was an injunction
to think and live autonomously, in defiance of convention. Illich quickly
became a celebrity, especially in circles identified with the burgeoning
counterculture. He spoke to large audiences in the Americas and in Europe. One
book followed another. Deschooling
Society (1971), a frontal assault on modern education, probably his best–known
work. Tools for Conviviality (1973),
a call for human relations freed from the constraints of status and
consumership. Energy and Equity
(1974), a work in tune with many of the themes of the emergent environmental
movement. Medical Nemesis (1976), an
attack on the technologization and impersonality of modern medicine, which
opened with the lapidary sentence: “The medical establishment has become a
major threat to health.” Toward the end of the 1970s came an influential essay,
“Shadow–Work,” which criticized the downgrading of unpaid labor, especially
that of women—needless to say, it was hailed by feminists.

It is easy
to see why Illich’s ideas resonated well in the cultural climate of the time.
But he disappointed, one by one, most of the groups who first believed him to
be one of them. Catholics were irritated when he criticized missionaries in
Latin America as cultural imperialists. The counterculture discovered that he
found repugnant many if not most of their proclivities, from drugs to
promiscuous sex. He upset the left when, after a visit to Cuba, he described
the Castro regime as an odious tyranny. And feminists were deeply offended when
he argued, some years after “Shadow–Work,” that women had been better off in
traditional societies in which they devoted themselves to the life of the
family. Illich was a genie who could not be kept in any bottle. Like Goethe’s
Mephistopheles, he was a “spirit who ever negates.”

What impressed
most about Illich was his enormous vitality, personal as well as intellectual.
Switching easily between languages, he delved into conversations with zest. But
he was a respectful and enthusiastic listener, especially when he encountered a
new idea. He dominated the intellectual life at CIDOC, not by imposing his
ideas on others, but by the sheer force of his own. Once, with his friend the
Brazilian bishop Helder Camara, he traveled throughout Latin America from one
carnival festival to another. To get a sense of Africa, he went on a walking
tour through the southern Sahara. He repeatedly visited Benares, where he
stayed in Hindu temples.

CIDOC declined
along with Illich’s influence as the cultural climate changed. Opposed to
anything that smacked of “schooling,” he made almost no effort to control the
program. All sorts of people were allowed to lecture, some of them with quite
outlandish ideas. A sort of intellectual Gresham’s Law ensued: the good people
increasingly stayed away. When this became evident to Illich, he made what must
have been a difficult decision—he shut the place down, keeping only an archive
of materials on topics that had concerned CIDOC, managed by his long–time
collaborator Valentina Borremans.

Thereafter
Illich led an itinerant life between Cuernavaca and Bremen (where he had a
devoted group of collaborators around Barbara Duden), with brief teaching
stints in the United States. His publications dealt with increasingly
idiosyncratic topics, many of them concerned with a search for the origins of
modernity in medieval thought. The last book of his that came to my attention
was In the Vineyard of the Text
(1993), a commentary on the twelfth–century writer Hugh of Saint Victor.

There are, I
think, two threads that run through Illich’s opus from the beginning. There is
a radical critique of all aspects of modernity, grounded in a profoundly
conservative view of the human condition. And there is a deep respect for what
Illich called the “vernacular”—the wisdom of ordinary people and their ways of
coping with life.

My first
contact with Illich occurred in 1969. He phoned me, opening with the sentence:
“This is Ivan Illich. You probably don’t know who I am.” I assured him that I
did know. He told me that he had heard, correctly, that I was planning to spend
the summer in Cuernavaca with my family, then added: “Come to CIDOC. We need
you.” I subsequently understood what he meant. He had read some of my writings
on the relation of society and consciousness, and he thought that they
contained ideas he could use. The invitation was irresistible. During the
following months I lectured at CIDOC to a very responsive audience. Much more
important for me was my being part of the ongoing conversation there. It turned
out to be a very important period for me, opening up the entire topic of
modernization and development, which has occupied me ever since. It also
prompted a turn from the theoretical concerns of my early work to much more
empirical issues. In my own recollection of this time there is an inextricable
linkage between the excitement of new ideas, the powerful impact of the Mexican
milieu, and the image of Illich himself—talking, listening, laughing, offering
both physical and intellectual hospitality.

Between 1969
and 1972 I spent three summers in Cuernavaca. I started work, with Brigitte
Berger and Hansfried Kellner, on a book dealing with modern consciousness (it
eventually became The Homeless Mind
[1973]). Originally this was to be a book coauthored with Illich. The project
was aborted, for practical rather than intellectual reasons. But it had become
increasingly clear that there were significant differences between his view of
things and my own. However much I appreciated many of Illich’s criticisms of
modern life, I could not agree with his view of education, technology,
capitalism, or the role of women. Underlying all these disagreements was a
basic one: Illich did not really like modernity; I did, and I do. What is more,
as I became more involved with practical policy matters, I came to think that
many of Illich’s visions of a desirable society were not realizable. In the 1970s
I directed a study for the Vienna Institute of Development, a creation of then–Chancellor
Bruno Kreisky. In my one conversation with him I mentioned Illich. He responded
impatiently: “One cannot use this” (“Damit
kann man nichts anfangen”). I disputed him but had to admit to myself that
I did not really disagree. Still, none of these disagreements affected either
my intellectual or personal regard for Illich.

After the mid–1970s
our contacts became intermittent. Illich often called me from some airport,
announced that he was coming through Boston, and informed me that he would come
by the house for a short visit. One time he kept a taxi waiting outside while
we talked. Then there was the surreal episode of the migrant scarf. Illich
possessed a rare scarf, made from both llama and alpaca hair, which had been
given to him by a Peruvian philosopher. Illich called me from New York, telling
me that he had forgotten the scarf in the office of his publisher, who was
going to mail it to me; he would then pick it up on a forthcoming visit to
Boston. Illich arrived, but the scarf did not. Next, he asked me to forward it
to Atlanta where, he informed me, he spent every New Year’s Eve with the widow
of Erich Fromm (Fromm lived in Cuernavaca for a while and had become a friend).
The scarf arrived, some days after Illich’s visit, and I duly sent it on to
Atlanta. But a quick recapitulation of Illich’s itinerary made me doubt that
the scarf would reach him in Atlanta either. I then had a vision of the scarf
following Illich, from continent to continent, never reaching him—a metaphor of
unending pilgrimage. (I never did learn where the scarf ended up.)

About two
years ago I received a short letter from Illich. He regretted that we had seen
so little of each other in recent years and thanked me for having given him
some ideas that he had not had before. It read like a goodbye letter. I knew
that he had been seriously ill, and I phoned him in Mexico. It was a brief
conversation. He said that he was quite well, that he was working. Then he
added: “I am ready for departure” (we spoke in German—“abreisebereit”). May his journey be full of glory.

Peter L. Berger is Director of the Institute for the Study of Economic Culture at Boston University.