Conference Program

The presentation outlines the key philosophical ideas behind Ivan Illich’s social criticism, with particular emphasis on the personalist elements within it as a possible paradigm for a renewed educational system.

Illich captures the fate of the “new society” – the modern and postmodern age – with the following insight: “Our imaginations have been industrially deformed to conceive only what can be moulded into an engineered system or social habits that fit the logic of large-scale production. We have almost lost the ability to frame in fancy a world in which sound and shared reasoning sets limits to everybody's power to interfere with anybody's equal power to shape the world.”¹

He argues that we are not merely passing through a historical stage but inhabiting an era in which the ontological understanding of the human being is fundamentally reshaped. Humans increasingly become instruments and consumers of their own inventions rather than agents who use them to realize their creative and human potential.

His criticism rests on two core concepts: vernacular values and convivial society. Vernacular values refer to the value systems found in indigenous cultures and small autonomous communities – systems grounded in mutual aid, independence from global institutional-industrial forces, and proportional reciprocity between human beings and their environment. Such a framework enables individuals to actualize their humanity by offering a concrete experience of human existence within a broader reality.

The notion of a convivial society builds on these values, translating them into a vision for contemporary post‑modernity. It represents a new epistemic and normative orientation toward reality – one that modern societies have largely lost.

While the modern legal system grounds many of its principles in the concept of the person, Illich emphasizes another dimension often overlooked: the lived, relational experience of personhood. This dimension cannot be fully articulated in rights or declarations but manifests in direct, lived engagement with others. Here Illich’s thought intersects significantly with the personalist tradition. True personal development, he argues, cannot be achieved solely through abstract theories or formal legislation but through a life-giving orientation toward the other: “We can only live these changes: we cannot think our way to humanity.”²

The presentation is structured in three parts. The first introduces the philosophical foundations of Illich’s social criticism. The second examines these concepts through the lens of personalist philosophy. The final section synthesizes the results and considers whether a convivial-personalist paradigm can serve as a viable framework for renewed understanding of contemporary society and new educational approaches. The central thesis of this presentation is that education and pedagogy must be grounded in the dignity and uniqueness of the human person, and only then expressed through specific educational approaches and methodologies.

¹ Ivan Illich, Tools for Conviviality, Fontana (Glasgow: William Collins Sons & Co, 1975), 28.

² Ivan Illich, Celebration of Awareness: A Call for Institutional Revolution (New York: Doubleday & Company, 1971), 3.