Toward a History of Needs

In these pages, Ivan Illich writes against the moral authority of professions, against economic “development” as an unquestioned good, against schooling as the privileged path to learning, against the subjugation of desire to needs, and against ever greater energy use. At first glance, much of this can seem passé. The prestige of the professions has withered; development is no longerdebated but assumed; education has migrated to platforms and certificates; needs have given way to desires; energy expansion is the unquestioned fuel for data centers and planetary competition.It seems the world has moved on. And yet Illich’s critique has not dulled — it has sharpened. The first quarter of the twenty-first century…