Abstract

My theme is ‘con-spiratio’ and Ivan Illich’s lecture on the ingredients or prerequisites of establishing a community or polity. In addition, I explore questions of culture in Illich’s conspiracy lecture along with the related question of grace, Illich’s ‘Umsonstigkeit.’ In addition to Illich on the parable of the good Samaritan and his meditation on ‘The Last Days of Savonarola,’ I note Antonio de Nicolas’s Powers of Imagining and his analysis of the role of the devotional writings of the Franciscan, Carthusian, Dominican, and Cistercian orders in the spiritual formation of Ignatius of Loyola (i.e., hermeneutico-phenomenologically, ‘how to be a saint’), along with Tracy Strong (writing on the imitatio Christi) and Alasdair MacIntyre (writing on oaths in After Virtue), with a tiny allusion to Simone de Beauvoir and Michel Foucault but also Paul Feyerabend and Nietzsche throughout.

Thinking with Ivan Illich, 2025

Lucca, Italy 18-22 June 2025