The Rivers North of the Future

Charles Taylor, David Cayley

• Publisher: House of Anansi Press
• Year: 2005
• eBook ISBN: 9780887848933
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Biographies

In The Rivers North of the Future David Cayley has compiled Ivan Illich's moving and insightful thoughts concerning the fate of the Christian Gospel.

Illich's view, which could be summed up as the corruption of the best is the worst, is that Jesus' call to love more abundantly became the basis for new forms of power in the hands of those who organized and administered this New Testament. Illich also explores the invention of technology, the road from hospitality to the hospital, the criminalization of sin, the church as the template of the modern state, and the death of nature. Illich's analysis of contemporary society as a congealed and corrupted Christianity is both a bold historical hypothesis and a call to believers to re-invent the Christian church.

With a foreword by Charles Taylor.

Ivan Illich (1926-2002) was a brilliant polymath, an iconoclastic thinker, and a prolific writer. He was a priest, vice-rector of a university, founder of the Centre for Intercultural Documentation in Cuernavaca, Mexico, and author of numerous books, including Deschooling Society, Tools for Conviviality, Energy and Equity, and Medical Nemesis.

INDEX

ABC: The Alphabetization of the Western Mind (Illich), 26

Abelard, 88

Absurdistan, 239n.

adultery, criminalization of, 87, 91–92

Aelred of Rievaulx, 18, 150–51, 183

aevum, 182, 214

age of systems, 77, 157–68, 226, 227–28

age of technology, 77, 157–58, 201–3, 225–26

Al-Haytham, 115–16, 117

Alighieri, Dante, 66

Alison, James, 32, 36

Alliance for Progress, 5, 6, 194, 201, 241n.

Al-Razi, 212

American Educational Association, 161

amoeba words, 158–60

a-mortal world, 122–23, 164–66

angels, perceived as tool users, 74–75, 201–2

Anthropic Principle, 243n.

Anti-Christ, 34, 60, 61, 80. See also mystery of evil

apocalypse, as revelation rather than catastrophe, 43, 100–101, 179, 184

apocalyptic world, 169–70, 177–80

Aquinas, St. Thomas, 67–68, 116, 214

misrepresented by modern scholars, 74

views on contingency, 67, 69, 74, 134

views on timeliness, 182

Ariès, Phillipe, 165

Aristotle, 71–72, 184, 239n.

asceticism

emphasis on moral use of eyes, 108–9

as precondition for gratuity, 228–29

Augustine, St., 54, 66

Baier, Klaus, 36, 238n.

Banerjee, Debabar, 123

Barth, Karl, 237n.

Bateson, Gregory, 227

Baumann, Zygmunt, 141, 241n.

Berengarius, 208–9

Berman, Harold, 190

Besançon, Alain, 110–11

blessings, separated from sacraments, 78–79

Blumenberg, Hans, 29, 64–67, 68

body

felt, 129

history of, 104–5, 127, 160, 205–11, 213–14

iatrogenic, 107, 129, 167–68, 209–10

resurrection of, 213–14

Bonaventure, St., 66, 239n.

Bönhoffer, Dietrich, 237n.

“bookish reading,” 26, 236n.

books, evolution of design, 27–28

The Brothers Karamazov (Dostoevsky), 9–10

Buber, Martin, 163, 242n.

canon law

codified, 190

separated from civil law, 89, 90

Catherine, St., 190

Catholic Church. See Roman Cath...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Preface
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedicaiton
• Preface1
• Contents
• Foreword by Charles Taylor
• Preface
• Introduction
• I The Corruption of the Best is the Worst
• II Reiterations
• Notes
• Index