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Despite the distance between their philosophical roots, Ivan Illich and André Gorz, two contemporary theorists, shared observations and questioning. How can individual autonomy and living together be reconciled today? Theoretically, modern society promised autonomy to all individuals, but Gorz and Illich concluded that everywhere the individual is powerless, alienated and expropriated of self by the industrial and bureaucratic organisation of our society. Each with their own sensitivity, Gorz and Illich developed political, economic and social ideas to honour modern society’s promise. Gorz’s aim was to surpass capitalism by an ecologist approach to labour. He argued that labour could no longer be the sole source of income and promoted the idea of a universal income as the best way to safeguard individual autonomy and the common man’s way of life. Illich accused modern society of being too complex and excessively developed to give individuals a chance of being self-governing. So he defined a “viability threshold”, to limit development and promote “proportional structures”. Gorz worked on an ecologist society and Illich on a society based on non industrial or bureaucratic values he named “vernacular values”. Two seminars held in Paris in Autumn 2012 to synthesize their work, their common points and singularities highlighted the way they went about to deal with their vision: Illich as an archaeologist of current values and representations and Gorz as an existentialist and post-marxist philosopher who used the press and political analysis to broadcast his ideas.