Guided by Hope and Not by Conscience: An Examination of the Arguments of Ivan Illich

Ivan Illich was an incisive critic of aspects of contemporary Western cultures, such as the over-reach of obligatory institutionalized schooling, the excessive medicalization of society, and the dangers of global industrial development. From the outset there was a deeper edge to his work which concerned the formative, but ambivalent, influence of Christianity. His case is that a perversion of Christianity has come to be woven deep into the fabric of modernity and that ‘living by one’s conscience’ is one of the constitutive threads therein. Illich advocates living by hope and not by conscience. The article presents some lines along which Illich’s concern with the centrality of hope could be further developed.