Charles Taylor on Illich

We mentioned the other day that a five-part radio program featuring David Cayley in conversation with philosopher Charles Taylor is scheduled for broadcast later this month on the Canadian Broadcasting Corp.'s Radio One channel. Mr. Taylor, who wrote the forward for Mr. Cayley's book The Rivers North of the Future, has written about Illich's idea that the modern world and all its needy persons consuming and competing for the scarce outputs of various service institutions (schools, hospitals, etc.) can best be explained as a corrupted working out of the Christian Gospel - namely, in a book called A Secular Age. It has just come to our attention that what appears to be a good part (and possibly all) of the passage in that book that addresses Illich is available on the Web, here. It provides a good summary and interpretation of Illich's analysis of modernity and its roots. (We're not sure, though, what the person who has posted this book excerpt is up to, as he states on the same page that "it is eminently possible to consider Ivan Illich to be a bona fide nutter.")