Techne (τέχνη) is a crucial and yet potentially obscure concept in ancient Greek thought. It is of great significance principally because the technai (‘skills, arts, sciences’) often served as models for apparently more complex ideas, such as virtue, nature or the workings of the divine ‒ that is the Socratic ‘craft analogy’. It is potentially obscure ironically because the craft analogy assumes techne to be a simple concept and that the examples adduced self-evidently belong to the category of techne. We, however, in this post-industrial age, cannot walk as Socrates did among the many small workshops clustering around the agora or question the ancient craftsmen seated there on what it is they know and why it matters. Modern students of philosophy may, and should, wonder what it is exactly that an ancient shoemaker or cithara-player or even a doctor knew or did. Parallels from our world, including the modern professions, are only somewhat helpful. And yet what is worse is that techne turns out, in the final analysis, not to be as simple a concept as might at first be supposed. As this volume demonstrates, it is a multifaceted term, and ‘the view of techne alters according to the uses to which the philosophers put the concept’ (p. 11).
Johansen and the contributors he has assembled have thus performed a highly valuable service in providing what is essentially a handbook for study of the meaning and purpose of the concept of techne in Greek philosophy. The focus of the book is wide, taking in 1,000 years of philosophical enquiry from Protagoras and Socrates in the 400s bce to Proclus in the 400s ce, with essays on Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Epicureans, Sceptics and Plotinus in between. Each chapter is devoted to a single work, philosopher or school, though there is naturally some overlap in content. Many readers will in all probability concentrate on the chapters most relevant to their research, yet the book as a whole provides a fascinating survey of change and continuity in the ways in which the idea of techne is employed and understood. No such study can be entirely comprehensive, of course (personally I would have entered a plea for some discussion of Xenophon, and little attention is paid to parallel discussions of techne in non-philosophical works), but the chapters are sufficiently wide-ranging to fulfil the book's purposes. Although the volume can legitimately be described as a handbook, the individual chapters aim not merely to outline the subject, but also, in the editor's words, to ‘present an original and focused argument’ (p. 14). By and large the contributors do indeed strike the right balance between descriptive survey and analysis, and there is much to interest even those familiar with the texts and problems under discussion.
On Plato and the Presocratics E. Hussey argues that the apparent incoherence of Protagoras’ outline of politike techne in Plato's dialogue Protagoras is due to the fact that this is a deliberately incomplete account, something that was evident to Plato's original audience. Hussey suggests that Plato aims, in both the Protagoras and the Theaetetus, to reproduce the ideas of the historical Protagoras. Comparison between these dialogues and also with the Hippocratic Corpus can reveal in its entirety a ‘genuinely pre-Platonic line of thinking’ (p. 16). R. Barney similarly shows how the ‘intellectualist’ model of virtue as a form of teachable knowledge is derived from the arguments of sophists such as Protagoras and is not one that Socrates endorses. She challenges, convincingly in my view, the notion of an evolution in Plato's thinking away from a Socratic belief in virtue-techne. In fact, for Plato virtue is always a sort of techne, but not in the sense that it is knowledge. Rather, virtue, like techne, belongs to ‘a broader category of reason-giving, norm-imposing identities’ (p. 78). Thus, a skilled person, like a virtuous person, is not defined simply by mastery of a set of techniques but by a commitment to a particular end. Barney's, perhaps controversial, conclusion is that for Plato ‘there is ‒ there must be ‒ a craft of deliberation that has for its end the human good as such’ (p. 84). Moving away from human techne, Johansen turns his attention to divine craftsmanship in Plato's Timaeus (a text that also features prominently in E.K. Emilsson and J. Opsomer's studies of the Neoplatonists). He aims to discover why it is that mortal beings are the creation of the gods in the Timaeus and not the Demiurge, who was himself the lesser gods’ creator. The answer, he argues, is that the gods are practising a different and lesser version of the Demiurge's techne, while also ‘extrapolating on the basis of his example’ (p. 104).
T. Nawar's chapter spans both the works of Plato and Aristotle. He attempts to explain three confusing and potentially contradictory claims regarding techne: that skill has a ‘two-way nature’ in both allowing the craftsman to achieve an effect or its opposite, that skilled people cannot fail in their aim and that skill is directed to some good. Nawar elucidates the reasons why all three appear in both the Platonic and the Aristotelian corpus and why they potentially make sense. U. Coope addresses the question of how Aristotle conceived the difference between techne when understood as ‘productive understanding’ and other forms of knowledge (episteme) that are theoretical. She suggests that productive knowledge, unlike theoretical knowledge, has an infinite range of explanatory demonstrations, since ‘someone who fully possesses the craft will grasp a certain limited number of productive explanations and will have the capacity to come up with further explanations’ (p. 129).
Similarly, the distinction between techne and empeiria (‘experience’) in Aristotle is the topic of the following chapter by R. Bolton. He attempts to provide an outline of the probable contents of Aristotle's lost treatise on Techne based on discussions in the extant works. Bolton assumes, surely rightly, that, just as the Politics was informed by the constitutional handbooks produced by his school, Aristotle's ideas on techne were also grounded in these lost studies of techne and individual technai (p. 132). Yet while this kind of speculation is potentially worthwhile, Bolton's outline of Aristotle's overall theory of techne seems incomplete and unnecessarily confusing. This is because Bolton overemphasises the distinction between techne and empeiria, as well as that between theoretical ‘knowledge why’ and practical ‘knowledge that’. As a result, he is led to exaggerate the differences in the understanding of techne in ‘esoteric’ works such as the Metaphysics and ‘exoteric’ treatises, such as the Nicomachean Ethics. In fact, Aristotle sees empeiria as both a lesser form of cognition and a founding element of techne. An overly rigid distinction between practical and theoretical skills is unhelpful: rather, Aristotle appears to present a hierarchy of skills that are more or less empirical or theoretical. Practical skills thus may have theoretical elements, as is in fact suggested by texts such as Metaphysics 1.1. Bolton notes (p. 159) that housebuilding is a prime example of techne in the Nicomachean Ethics, as one learned through practical experience without ‘a theoretical scientific component’. Yet Aristotle in Metaphysics 1.1 (981a30–b6) provides the craftsman and the architect as examples of the distinction between empirical ‘knowledge that’ and theoretical ‘knowledge why’. Aristotle's point is that the architect possesses an overall understanding of the art of construction, the plan for the building and the reasons behind that plan, which he demonstrates in commanding the craftsmen. Thus, the experience of the humble worker is but a lower element of the overall techne.
The philosophers of the Hellenistic period are the subject of two interconnected chapters by V. Tsouna on the Stoics and the Epicureans, which provide a comprehensive summary of views held by members of these rival schools. Tsouna begins with the definitions of techne provided by the Stoics and guides readers through such potentially unfamiliar terms as ἕξις (‘tenor’). She then considers a number of aspects of the Stoics’ approaches to techne, including their debt to Plato, their understanding of the ‘art of life’ and their theories of cosmogony. Similarly, Tsouna notes similarities and differences between the Stoic and the Epicurean approaches to techne, highlighting, for example, the rejection by the philosophers of the Garden of any notion of a divine inventor of the technai and the doctrines that made up the Epicurean ‘art of living’. This summary is pieced together using the extant works of later authors, especially Lucretius, Philodemus and Diogenes Laertius. She concludes with a discussion of Philodemus’ Rhetoric and his definition of techne, which should in itself serve as a helpful introduction to this fragmentary and difficult text.
Turning to philosophy under the Roman Empire, S. Sienkiewicz endeavours to uncover the ‘sceptic's art’ in the works of Sextus Empiricus. Sienkiewicz questions in particular whether scepticism is itself a techne based on the definition that Sextus provides at Adversus Mathematicos 2.10 (usually attributed to the Stoic Zeno). Sienkiewicz argues that Sextus believed that Scepticism was a useful discipline, but that it did not meet the condition of having a coherent subject matter or systematic methodology. In reaching this conclusion, Sienkiewicz urges us to distinguish between Sextus the writer, who employs a systematic approach in his writing, and the figure of the paradigmatic sceptic, who does not.
The Neoplatonists are the focus of the final two chapters. Emilsson begins his account of Plotinus’ views on the arts with a warning that ‘Plotinus does not have a whole lot to say about the arts’ (p. 245). And yet, despite this, Emilsson manages to make two interesting observations. First, he argues that Plotinus believed that artists could ‘grasp the intelligible nature of things’, though they may not always do so (p. 253). Emilsson asserts ‒ against the view of O. Kuisma (Art or Experience: a Study of Plotinus’ Aesthetics [2003]) ‒ that Plotinus did on this question break from the earlier view of Plato. Second, Emilsson asks what Plotinus means when he ‘describes the creative cosmological activity of souls as artistic, technikos’ (p. 255). Ironically the answer, he believes, is to do with the fact that techne, when it is functioning properly, does not deliberate (cf. Arist. Phys. 199b28). Plotinus thus compares the activity of life to dancing, where the dancer moves skilfully without needing to think.
This ‘art of world making’ is also the focus of the final contribution, on Proclus, by Opsomer. As with Plotinus, it appears that human productive knowledge is not of great interest to Proclus. Yet again, despite this unpromising start, there is still much that can be said on the topic of divine production. Opsomer therefore attempts to do the opposite of Proclus and to understand human techne from Proclus’ fuller description of divine craftsmanship. Just as the divine Demiurges create through thought, human techne is essentially the idea of the created object in the mind of the artist. Yet the plans, or logoi, of human artisans are human creations and though they may receive assistance from the gods, the gods are not craftsmen in the human sense. Opsomer thus explains how divine and mortal craftsmen differ while remaining analogous.
The editor and contributors are to be congratulated on producing an accessible yet highly stimulating collection of studies. This book should be of interest to all students of ancient philosophy and indeed anyone interested in skill and craft in all aspects of ancient society.
