The study of education systems as social phenomena has led scholars to question the role of education in modern society. The question of how to improve education naturally leads to concerns about what is wrong with the present education system. If education is meant to elevate the next generation, how can it meet the goal of ensuring a meaningful existence for those being educated? Scholars have demonstrated that education has been reduced to a process of the construction of objects, where (...) curriculum as techne commodifies students into products with market value. We propose that the tendency of interpreting techne as technology is a perspective of the modern age, and the rules of modern education are based on the rules of modern technology, under the guidance of the paradigm of productivity. We will introduce a broader interpretation of techne which frames it as the cultivation of virtue, i.e., virtue-techne. On this basis, education could be viewed as techne in the sense of praxis, rather than as fabrication in the sense of production. We highlight the rising rate of student suicides in Taiwan in recent years, where we determine the education system lacks a focus on praxis. This article investigates alternative praxis-oriented notions of education, from Aristotle's cultivation of virtue to Hadot's "spiritual exercises," to advocate for a shift away from the production paradigm. Indebted to Heidegger, we clarify his "techne as revealing" by emphasizing two frameworks for education: The first, modern education being valued by its adherence to metrics based in the paradigm of production. The second, education as a process wherein its value is derived from the life context of the participating individual. Finally, as a comparative study, we explore the current state of education in Russia and Taiwan, and present the case of one high school in Taiwan which has adopted the practice of spiritual exercises in its curriculum, including a required hike to the peak of Taiwan's tallest mountain, to cultivate a sense of the liberated life before its students graduate. (shrink)

Gilbert Simondon has recently attracted the interest of political philosophers and theorists, despite the fact that he is renowned as a philosopher of technics – author of Of the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects – who also elaborated a general theory of complex systems in Individuation in the Light of the Notions of Form and Information. A group of scholars has developed Gilles Deleuze’s early suggestion that Simondon’s social ontology might offer the basis for a re-theorisation of radical democracy. (...) Others, following Herbert Marcuse, have instead focused on Simondon’s analysis of the relationship between technology and society. However, only a joint study of Simondon’s two major works can reveal their implicit political stakes. As I will argue, Simondon’s anti-Aristotelianism and his anti-Heideggerian understanding of the Greek origins of philosophy, allow us to conceive philosophical thought as a ‘tradition of invention’, that is, a pedagogical technē endowed with the political task of maintaining the openness of the social system and allowing normative invention to emerge from within. (shrink)

This work investigates how ancient philosophers understood productive knowledge or technê and used it to explain ethics, rhetoric, politics and cosmology. In eleven chapters leading scholars set out the ancient debates about technê from the Presocratic and Hippocratic writers, through Plato and Aristotle and the Hellenistic age, ending in the Neoplatonism of Plotinus and Proclus. Amongst the many themes that come into focus are: the model status of ancient medicine in defining the political art, the similarities between the Platonic and (...) Aristotelian conceptions of technê, the use of technê as a paradigm for virtue and practical rationality, technê´s determining role in Platonic conceptions of cosmology, technê´s relationship to experience and theoretical knowledge, virtue as an 'art of living', the adaptability of the criteria of technê to suit different skills, including philosophy itself, the use in productive knowledge of models, deliberation, conjecture and imagination. (shrink)

Die Platonische Techne-Analogie hat eine heuristische Funktion. In ihr wird eine bestimmte (vom Verfasser «technisch» genannte) Denkweise sichtbar, die in der platonischen Philosophie durchgehend einflussreich bleibt. Die vorliegende Untersuchung besteht aus zwei Teilen. Der erste Teil analysiert die vielfältigen Strukturen der platonischen Techne-Analogie und bringt die in ihnen wirkende «technische» Denkweise zum Licht. Der zweite Teil behandelt den Einfluss dieser Denkweise auf verschiedene Bereiche der platonischen Philosophie.

In Plato’s Gorgias, Socrates argues that philosophy is superior to rhetoric in part because the former is a techne while the latter is not. I argue that the Socratic practice of philosophy within this dialogue fails to qualify as a techne for exactly the same reasons that rhetoric fails to qualify as a techne. In doing so, I introduce a new kind of Socratic ignorance: methodological ignorance. I reject both Charles Kahn’s account of the relationship (...) between the dialogue’s dramatic and philosophical contents, and Thomas Brickhouse and Nicholas Smith’s claim that Socrates never regarded his practice as a techne. (shrink)

The preparation of food and nutrition is a pervasive techne in the classical Greek world. Indeed, food technology may be a defining characteristic of humanity. We begin with a glimpse of a tension in the use of the word techne in relation to the preparation of food in Plato’s Gorgias 462d-e. Turning to the Presocratics, we discern three distinct perspectives on food, those of Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and the treatise Regimen. In Regimen, we find an anticipation of the distinctions (...) made by Plato in the Gorgias passage, and trace some of the implications in what we may call the “food technology” of this treatise that manages to be both philosophical and technically informative. (shrink)

Since the publication of Part I of our joint special issue on Nanotech Challenges (see Techné 8.2 & Hyle 10.2), several international conferences have taken place that brought together scholars from the humanities and the social, natural, and engineering sciences to reflect on the challenges posed by nanotechnology. These included Nanotechnology in Science, Economy and Society , University of Marburg, 13-15 January 2005; Nano-Ethics, University of South Carolina, 2-6 March 2005; Nano Before There Was Nano , Chemical Heritage Foundation, Philadelphia, (...) PA, 18-19 March 2005. In addition, numerous research groups worldwide, who used to investigate the science-technology-society interfaces, have put nanotechnology at the top of their agenda; international expert groups are being formed; and national centers will soon be established in the US and UK. (shrink)

before i begin, i would like to express my considerable gratitude to Heldke, Orosco, and Stehn for their stimulating reading of my work and their considered critiques, and to the SAAP Coss Committee for taking pains to represent a community, identifying members in the spirit of the SAAP. Indeed I must parallel and reflect the words Heldke used: "It was just fun to read... about a place... [described] by a theoretical tradition I value" or Orosco locating my scholarship in ancient (...) debates between forms of reasoning about human behavior, or Stehn making me think how to better achieve the aspirations of my applied scholarship. Again, let me say, thanks to you all.Readers made... (shrink)

'By identifying the extent to which Aristotle's thinking about ethics was shaped by notions drawn from the crafts Angier has thrown new light on a surprising number of topics and has deepened our understanding of tensions within Aristotle's thought. It is by now a rare achievement to have said something new, true and important about Aristotle.' -- Alasdair MacIntyre, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, University of Notre Dame, USA.

This article stems from a dialogue with the philosopher Pietro Montani, starting from his studies in the field of aesthetics and the philosophy of technique and from the significance of some analyzes that prompt a critical debate also with the philosophy of education. The dialogue with the international scientific community and with the theories of authors such as Vygotskij, Benjamin, Kant, Lo Piparo, Gallese, Garroni, Stiegler, Ricoeur (to mention only the authors treated in this interview) makes these reflections (...) extremely topical and attentive to developments related to the destiny of knowledge and languages in times of digital revolution and cultural and social crisis. (shrink)

The relationship between the physical world and technology is fraught with complications; and yet both physis and techne are necessary to create the environment in which humanity may flourish. Approaching the issue from a philosophical standpoint, this article introduces a series of papers that deal with the interface between philosophy and technology, the critical discussion of the challenges posed by technologies, and their impact or implications.

Returning to the Greek understanding of art to rethink its capacities, Creation and the Function of Art focuses on the relationship between techné and phusis (nature). Moving away from the theoretical Platonism which dominates contemporary understandings of art, this book instead reinvigorates Aristotelian causation. Beginning with the Greek topos and turning to insights from philosophy, pure mathematics, psychoanalysis and biology, Jason Tuckwell re-problematises techné in functional terms. This book examines the deviations at play within logical forms, the subject, and (...) upon phusis to better situate the role of the function in poiesis (art). In so doing, Tuckwell argues that art concerns a genuinely creative labour that cannot be resolved via an ontological or epistemological problem, but which instead constitutes an encounter with the problematic. As such, techné is shown to be a property of the living, of intelligence coupled to action, that not only enacts poiesis or art, but indicates a broader role for creative deviation in nature. (shrink)

Plotin, philosophe grec du IIIe siècle après J.-C., ayant vécu à Alexandrie et à Rome, offre au lecteur d'aujourd'hui un voyage merveilleux dans le monde "exotique" de la pensée antique. De quelle manière les Traités de Plotin invitent-ils le lecteur du XXIe siècle à adopter des catégories mentales qui lui sont "étrangères"? Et comment l'installent-ils ainsi "à l'extérieur" du monde moderne qu'il habite? N'est-ce pas à travers la richesse du champ sémantique des mots utilisés par les Ennéades, autorisant parfois des (...) associations étonnantes entre des concepts a priori inconciliables ou peu conciliables aux yeux de l'homme d'aujourd'hui, que résiderait notamment l'un des intérêts de la philosophie de Plotin? Les trois chapitres du présent ouvrage intitulés "Exégèse et originalité", "Existence et identité", "Logos et technê", illustrent ces types d'associations conceptuelles déroutantes, et pourtant souvent convaincantes. Lhomme moderne ne peut qu'être fasciné par l'argumentation des Ennéades montrant, pas à pas, les liens indéfectibles et stimulants rattachant par exemple "l'existence à l'identité", "le logos à la technê" ; de tels liens pouvant parfois conduire Plotin à dépasser la tradition dont il est issu et dont il se réclame pourtant. (shrink)

My paper addresses a number of questions raised in the Statesman by the Eleatic Visitor’s identification of certain ontological conditions for the existence of art of due measure, and therefore of all the technai. My view is that evidence relevant to these questions can be found in the Philebus, and specifically, in an ontological doctrine presented at 23c–27c. What emerges from an examination of the Statesman and Philebus is a highly developed conception of technê, one that affords a place for (...) such ordinary human activities within the broader framework of Plato’s philosophy. (shrink)

This is a brief dictionary entry on the Greek word "techne" (art or skill) as used in ancient Greek philosophy, in particular in the work of Plato and Aristotle. A techne may be a manual craft, such as carpentry, or a science, such as medicine. A techne is based on universal principles and is capable of being taught.

With his most famous question, the Being-question, the Seinsfrage — a question essentially and not incidentally obliterated by the tradition of philosophic questioning, Heidegger proposes a phenomenology of questioning. This is not counter to the project of philosophy but it calls us to our own experience as questioners, even as those who ask, who can ask 'Why the why.'(1) For Heidegger, 'only because man is in this way, can he and must he, in each case, say, not only yes (...) or no, but essentially yes and no.'. (shrink)

While it is generally accepted that we need to use our intelligence in order to get what we want, it is thought to be a cardinal error to imagine that by reasoning we can discover what we ought to want. Reason can in no way constrain the choice of ends, it can only constrain the choice of means once an end has been adopted. In Plato's philosophy we find a view strongly opposed to this attitude towards reason. It is (...) widely held, however, that to arrive at a position which is plainly opposed to common sense, Plato must have grossly confused reasoning about means with reasoning about ends. Evidence of this confusion is found in Plato's use of analogies between statecraft and navigation, and between virtue and skill. But the diagnosis of confusion rests on a misunderstanding of how Plato wanted to use the word translated ‘skill’, i.e. ‘ technē ’, and this misunderstanding is shared even by those who see Plato as rejecting the virtue/skill analogy. (shrink)

In support of an interpretation of the techne-analogy not as a doctrine about virtue, but as a dialectical tool employed by the Platonic Socrates, I analyze an atypical example: the 'healthy city' of 'Republic' II. First, I survey the more 'typical' uses of the techne-analogy in Book I, where Socrates seeks to understand justice by comparing it to various 'technai'. Then, I proceed to show that Socrates' Healthy City, essentially an association of craftsmen, is used in a very (...) similar manner to provoke questions about the relation of virtue to knowledge. Finally, I speculate on the kinds of considerations about justice that Socrates tries to draw his interlocutors to by means of the Healthy City, looking backward to Book I and forward to the rest of the 'Republic'. (shrink)

In affective neuroscience, constructivist models are acutely influenced by the modern technological evolution, which underwrites an ongoing epistemological substitution of techne for episteme. Evidenced symptomatically in the influence of artificial intelligence (AI), affective artefacts, these models inform an ontological incursion of techne seen to coincide with posthumanist aspirations and anthropology. It is from the perspective of this neuroscientific techne that posthumanism views the human being as increasingly ill adapted to the modern technological civilization, which, conversely, is understood (...) to require a technical governance of the sort envisioned through AI. Among the projects thought necessary for implementing this framework is a recasting of the human emotional spectrum. Revealed through its techne recasting, however, are explanatory commitments to a metaphysic of extrinsic and contiguous causes, where malleability is ontologically constitutive. Aligned with posthumanist assertions malleability is invoked to argue for a rapid advance of the human form, normatively driven by enlightenment ideals. The ontological claim, however, dispenses with the stability of an a priori, intersubjective and interrelational metaphysical form that undergirds the emotions, leading to the collapse of a definitional anthropos. This paper will argue that techne models of the emotions selectively endorse philosophy of science commitments, thereby introducing a normative inversion that deconstructs the notion of anthropology pursued in posthumanist aspirations. (shrink)

Plato’s treatment of poetry is usually discussed without reference to other contemporary reception of Greek poetry, leading to divergent political or aesthetic accounts of its meaning. Yet the culture of the Greek polis, in particular Athens, is the defining context for understanding his aims. Four distinct points are made here, and cumulatively an interpretation of Plato’s opposition to poetry: on the basis of other evidence, including Aristophanes’ Frogs, that Plato would quite reasonably understand poetry to claim the craft of looking (...) after a city ; that Socrates makes a rival claim that philosophy is the pursuit of this skill; that Plato considers the poets, owing to this rivalry, to aim to exclude philosophy from Athens; and finally, that Plato’s exclusion of poetry from the theoretical just city of the Republic is part of his defence of the possibility of philosophy in Athens. (shrink)

This paper discusses the interpretation of Charmides 164Dff. given by John Gould in The Development of Plato's Ethics. Gould claims that in this passage Plato wishes to indicate that he wants to delimit or qualify Socrates' analogy between morality or virtue on the one hand and art or craft (technē) on the other. Plato does this, supposedly, by showing us the unacceptable consequences which follow from assuming a complete analogy between morality and technē. I argue that this interpretation conflicts with (...) the text, which seems to indicate that the root of whatever problems occur in the dialectic is not the technē analogy, but rather that the analogy is not being applied strictly enough. In particular, I try to show that the failure of Critias' definition of temperance is due, in large measure, to his failure to specify an object for the knowledge which he asserts is equivalent to temperance. (shrink)

In the history of philosophy, the opposition between epistēmē and téchnē has been conventional. Whether Plato or Aristotle is interpreted, or whether Archimedes, Ctesibius, Philo of Byzantium or Heron of Alexandria are revised, there is a marginalization of the téchnē as compared to the epistemic hierarchy of pure thought . I propose a different interpretation of an archaeological and genealogical nature, according to which an epistēmē in the téchnē and a téchnē in the epistēmē could be postulated.The inquiry begins (...) with a reading of sources making use of etymology as a hermeneutic téchnē . The Hippocratic treatises have been used as the principal primary source. (shrink)

This essay re-problematises the Aristotelian concept of techne in terms of the mathematical function to demonstrate the centrality of agency in technics. This schema animates computational theory as an agential operator or computer, to situate agency’s necessity to the technical apparatus and the production of abstract relations.

Resumen En la historia de la filosofía, la oposición entre episteme y téchne ha sido convencional. Ya sea que se interprete a Platón o Aristóteles, o se revisen las invenciones de Arquímedes, Ctesibio, Filón de Bizancio o Herón de Alejandría, hay una marginalidad temática de la téchne frente a la jerarquía epistémica de un pensamiento puro (logis-mós). En este artículo se propone una interpretación diferente, de carácter arqueológico y genealógico, según la cual se podría postular una episteme en la téchne (...) y una téchne en la episteme. La indagación inicia con una lectura de fuentes, recurriendo a la etimología como téchne hermenéutica (o método hermenéutico). Como fuente primaria principal se utilizan los Tratados hipocráticos.In the history of philosophy, the opposition between episteme and téchne has been conventional. Whether Plato or Aristotle is interpreted, or whether Archimedes, Ctesibius, Philo of Byzantium or Heron of Alexandria are revised, there is a margi-nalization of the téchne as compared to the epistemic hierarchy of pure thought (logismós). I propose a different interpretation of an archaeological and genealogical nature, according to which an episteme in the téchne and a téchne in the episteme could be postulated. The inquiry begins with a reading of sources making use of ety-mology as a hermeneutic téchne (or hermeneutic method). The Hippocratic treatises have been used as the principal primary source. (shrink)

Technology extends human perception and it intervenes in relations to the environment. Life in cities is particularly affected by newest technological developments, and city dwellers are most shielded and disconnected from the natural world by these very same technologies. The term technology stems from the Greek techne, and it refers to an instrumental relation to the world—a manipulation and adaptation of the environment to human needs. However, by intervening in everyday life and modifying relations to the environment, technology also (...) produces new forms of life and is therefore also poetic in the sense of poiesis. It is clearly distinguished from literary works because it opens worlds of possibilities that are not fictional. This makes a reflection on its poeticity all the more urgent, because the large-scale advent of new technologies such as the industrialization or the digitization radically changes the modes of perception and relations to urban environments. Art works like literature absorb and articulate these changes and are therefore useful “strange tools” for putting on display the changing modes of experiencing cities. For instance, industrialization, explosive urban growth and the rapid modernization of cities overwhelmed the senses. In its very form and rhythm, modernist literature performs the fragmented and brisk-paced experience of modernity. The digital age ostensibly promises intelligibility and order, for digital technologies can survey and manage vast amounts of information. Smart cities are designed for this purpose and for offering tailored solutions to the inhabitants’ individual needs. However, data analytics cannot capture the phenomenological quality of lived experience. Art works can, and contemporary literary works put on display urban life-forms characterized by disembodiment and by exhaustive information on any subject that on its own does not translate into any sense of meaning or belonging. (shrink)

Abstract:Curiously, Marxist literary and art criticism often historicizes everything but the artist's labor. This essay articulates "techne-Marxism" as a critical standpoint that locates the ontological core of the artwork in conceptual and technical labor. It posits techne as the materialist substrate of art forms often explained away as part of an ideology of bourgeois taste rather than the proper bedrock of a Marxism that avoids alienating labor in a symptomology of historical structure. Ultimately, the value of techne-Marxism (...) is its ability to synthesize socially objective knowledge about art and the critic's ability to build labor-oriented evaluative judgments out of that knowledge. (shrink)

AbstractThe notion of techné in Husserl’s phenomenology is related to his treatment of the three layers of the “teaching of craft” and the two layers of the science of “life-world.” The superior layer of both is of philosophical significance. Aristotle’s statement in ethics and metaphysics: techné is man-made, but can transit to spontaneity, and then to natural becoming, which manifests physis as the ultimate aim of his philosophical system, enlightens us to notice the following aspects in Husserl’s phenomenology. 1. Pure (...) or formal ethics is of a high-level téchne in the philosophical sense. 2. The concept of life-world leads to transcendental phenomenology. 3. What Ideas II implies – as a technique the method of phenomenology tends to let the pure I and spiritual I as matters appear themselves by the natural attitude – could conduct us to understand the artistic aspect of Husserl’s philosophical theory. (shrink)

The article aims to advance our understanding of what the early Heidegger had in mind when he spoke about technics. Taking GA 18, Grundbegriffe der aristotelischen Philosophie, as a guiding text, Heidegger's “destructive” reading of the two notions most directly associated with Aristotle's presentation of technics—τεχνη and εξις—will be examined, especially with reference to the portrayal of technics in the Nicomachean Ethics. It will be argued that Aristotle already exaggerated the distinction between virtue and skill and that, instead of insisting (...) on their similarities (as will be argued to be desirable), Heidegger drove the two notions even further apart. This enabled him to form a warped picture of technical life, which he exploited as a counter image to develop an unrealistically non-technical notion of πρα;ξις, which Heidegger implicitly advocates. (shrink)

The objective of this article is to investigate whether the concept of techne is fruitful as a framework to analyze some of the pressing challenges inmodernmedicine. To do this, the concept of techne is scrutinized, and it is argued that it is a concept that integrates theoretical, practical and evaluative aspects, and that this makes it particularly suitable to analyze the complex activity of modern medicine. After applying this technical framework in relation to modern medicine, some of its (...) general consequences are elaborated. In particular, it is argued that the concept of techne is appropriate to address the constitutive role of technology in medicine. Techne thus appears to be as fruitful a philosophical concept today as it was in antiquity. (shrink)