{"product_id":"the-loss-of-the-senses-paperback","title":"The Loss of the Senses - Paperback","description":"\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cp style=\"text-align: right;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/reportcopyrightinfringement.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\"\u003e\u003cb\u003eReport copyright infringement\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\u003cp\u003eby \u003cb\u003eIvan Illich\u003c\/b\u003e (Author)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eThe Loss of the Senses\u003c\/em\u003e comprises seventeen essays that Ivan Illich (1926-2022) wrote between 1987 and 1998 and continued to edit until the end of his life. This collection is unknown to the English-speaking world.\u003cbr\u003e The essays cut across academic disciplines and range over different facets of contemporary life. Included among the many topics are the roots of the service economy, the history of the gaze, the idea of technology as a Western invention, and the co-related eclipse of the university and the text in the twenty-first century.\u003cbr\u003e Despite the variety of subjects treated, these essays cohere for two reasons. As Illich's \u003cem\u003eDeschooling Society\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eMedical Nemesis\u003c\/em\u003e did before, they confirm that being immersed in a technological milieu disables our native capacities to learn, heal, and move. Furthermore, they imply that we must deeply historicize the present to rightly understand the nature and effects of present-day socio-technical systems.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cem\u003eThe Loss of the Senses\u003c\/em\u003e holds up \"the mirror of the past,\" in which Illich recognizes the looming figure of the contemporary man without senses. He incisively argues that the techno-scientific cloud that now envelops us withers the realm of our felt experience. For example, our \"age of the show\" yokes the ubiquitous screen to an eye that can no longer see but, like a camera, can only record what it is shown.\u003cbr\u003e Illich also reminds us of the ever-present possibility of \"ascetical practices\" that can enliven our senses and thwart the dissolution of our embodied sensibilities.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch3\u003eAuthor Biography\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIvan Illich (1926-2002) was one of the most original social and religious thinkers of the 20th Century. Ordained a Roman Catholic priest in 1951, he became an advocate of a \"new Church\" and a critic of the existing form of the Roman Church which he called \"a giant that begins to totter before it collapses.\" The novelty of his ideas antagonized conservative forces in the Church, and he ended the controversy his advocacy had stirred up at the Vatican by announcing in 1969 that he would suspend the exercise of his priesthood and proceed, in future, \"as a simple faithful Christian.\" There followed a sequence of five books, beginning with 1970's \u003cem\u003eCelebration of Awareness\u003c\/em\u003e, calling for \"institutional revolution,\" or sometimes \"cultural revolution.\" Industrial institutions, from education (\u003cem\u003eDeschooling Society\u003c\/em\u003e) to medicine (\u003cem\u003eLimits to Medicine\u003c\/em\u003e), Illich wrote, were crossing a threshold into \"counter-productivity,\" a condition in which they would get in their own way and defeat their own purposes He also suggested that crucial personal and cultural competencies were being lost to growing professional and institutional predominance.\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eWhen the institutional revolution Illich proposed did not take place, he turned to the study of history in an attempt to unearth the roots of the \"certainties\" that had prevented reform. In books like \u003cem\u003eShadow Work, Gender\u003c\/em\u003e and \u003cem\u003eIn the Vineyard of the Text\u003c\/em\u003e, he explored how modern civilization took shape and tried, as he once said, to \"observe the emergence of those assumptions which, by going unexamined, have turned into today's certainties.\" (Ivan Illich in \u003cem\u003eConversation\u003c\/em\u003e, pp. 134-135). In his last years, Illich also began to speak and write about the role of the Christian Church in the formation of the modern West, putting forward the idea that the unique features of modernity are only explainable as a perverse mutation of Christian inspiration. \"When I look for the roots of modernity,\" he said, \"I find them in the attempts of the churches to institutionalize, legitimize and manage Christian vocation\" (\u003cem\u003eThe Rivers North of the Future\u003c\/em\u003e, p. 48).\u003c\/p\u003e \u003cp\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eNumber of Pages:\u003c\/strong\u003e 180\u003c\/div\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eDimensions:\u003c\/strong\u003e 0.82 x 9.21 x 6.14 IN\u003c\/div\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePublication Date:\u003c\/strong\u003e May 11, 2026\u003c\/div\u003e\n            ","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45343649431631,"sku":"9781800508644","price":50.2,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0677\/3083\/3487\/files\/aLSfisBMc69781800508644.webp?v=1780034145","url":"https:\/\/lumaryon.com\/products\/the-loss-of-the-senses-paperback","provider":"Lumaryon Universal","version":"1.0","type":"link"}