Original scientific paper

https://doi.org/10.32701/dp.19.1.1

The limit as a measured good and threshold towards the other in the thinking of Ivan Illich

Isabella Bruckner ; Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz Katholisch-Theologische Fakultät Institut für Fundamentaltheologie

Abstract

In the course of his critique on institutions and modern society, the historian and philosopher Ivan Illich seeks to understand how the conception of limitation has changed from antiquity to modernity. Illich speaks about the fading of an aesthetic of proportionality and complementarity, which has framed the perception of beings as well as that of space and time. Within this aesthetic, the experience of fundamental otherness was a constitutive element. The article illustrates Illich’s historical analysis and points out its significance for a reflection on the Christian practice of friendship. In the practice of friendship, otherness and complementarity are experienced in a horizon of freedom. In this context, thresholds and visible passages do not function as divisions or mediums of exclusion, but as perceptible markers, which can enable personal action in qualitatively differing spaces.

Keywords

otherness — complementarity — proportionality — limitation — threshold — aesthetics

Hrčak ID:

192417

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/192417

Publication date:

15.12.2017.

Article data in other languages: german

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