Techne

The word ‘techne’ is translated in several ways: ‘craft’, ‘art’, and ‘science’ are the most frequent… The Greek word is more inclusive than any one of these English terms. It is also very closely associated with the word ‘episteme’

Nussbaum establishes techne’s semantic breadth and its constitutive link to episteme, framing the entire subsequent debate about whether virtue can be assimilated to this form of systematic, teachable knowledge.

Martha C. Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy, 1986thesis

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surveying the full range of the fifth-century arts in the light of their underlying corporate aim, the elimination of tuche, we can make some observations that will prepare us, too, to understand why Socrates rejects it

Nussbaum identifies the elimination of tuche (chance) as the defining telos shared by all technai, making this the criterion against which any proposed political or ethical techne must be measured.

Martha C. Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy, 1986thesis

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The person of mere experience could tell you that on various occasions eating a lot of cheese gave the patient a stomach-ache… this second person’s knowledge would still fall short of techne’: ‘He must say what sort of pain it is and why it arises’

Through the medical example, Nussbaum articulates the core epistemological requirement of techne: the capacity to isolate causal elements and provide a general explanatory logos, distinguishing it from mere empirical accumulation.

Martha C. Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy, 1986thesis

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This battle between techne and phusis and the methods that ensure victory for the former are conceived of in terms of a verbal jousting match in which the sophist attempts to win a difficult cause against his opponent

Vernant reveals that the Greek conceptualization of techne as conquest of nature was structured by sophistic rhetoric, linking the logic of mastery inherent in techne to the intellectual culture of disputation rather than to experimental science.

Vernant, Jean-Pierre, Myth and Thought Among the Greeks, 1983thesis

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It had not yet acquired the features that, in our eyes, define technical intelligence and the basis for its dynamism. It was not integrated with science, or it was only partially so. The experimental method had no place in it.

Vernant delivers his central historical verdict: Greek technological thought, despite its reflective vocabulary around techne, remained structurally incomplete—lacking integration with science, natural law, and experimental method.

Vernant, Jean-Pierre, Myth and Thought Among the Greeks, 1983thesis

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Being thus subject to others and directed toward an end that is beyond it, how could the poiesis of the artisan possibly be considered a true type of action? In order to distinguish it from genuine activity, praxis, Aristotle calls it a mere movement: kinesis.

Vernant exposes the Aristotelian subordination of techne’s productive activity (poiesis/kinesis) to genuine praxis, showing how the craftsman’s work, directed toward an external end, was denied full ontological dignity in the Greek philosophical tradition.

Vernant, Jean-Pierre, Myth and Thought Among the Greeks, 1983supporting

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The fifth-century Prometheus Bound calls numbering ‘chief of all the stratagems’, expressing a popular view that number is somehow a, or even the, chief element in techne, or the techne par excellence.

Nussbaum traces how mathematical quantification became the paradigm of techne’s aspirations toward precision and control, connecting the epistemology of number to the broader project of eliminating contingency from human practical knowledge.

Martha C. Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy, 1986supporting

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The ability to sum things up at a glance, an essential part of the artisan’s technical mastery, only emphasizes that he is slave to a kairos and is incapable of dominating through his intelligence.

Vernant argues that the artisan’s dependence on kairos—the opportune moment he must recognize rather than create—reveals an inherent limitation in Greek techne that prevented it from achieving the sovereign rational mastery it nominally promised.

Vernant, Jean-Pierre, Myth and Thought Among the Greeks, 1983supporting

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The technical abilities that the division of tasks aims to perfect are presented as natural qualities… For Plato, the task of each man with a trade is ‘that to which his individual nature predestined him.’

Vernant demonstrates that Platonic and Aristotelian thought naturalized techne’s division of labor, grounding craft specialization in physis rather than convention and thus anchoring social hierarchy within the concept of technical aptitude.

Vernant, Jean-Pierre, Myth and Thought Among the Greeks, 1983supporting

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For Plato, at the opposite pole of ancient thought, human and ‘mortal’ techne is no more than a reproduction of a divine techne (Laws, 889cff. and 892b).

Vernant identifies Plato’s theological framing of techne—human craft as mimesis of divine making—as the metaphysical horizon that ultimately contained and subordinated technological thought within a cosmological order.

Vernant, Jean-Pierre, Myth and Thought Among the Greeks, 1983supporting

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The Gorgias denies the title of techne to anything that cannot give a general logos of its procedures; its distinction between empeiria (experience, an empirical knack) and techne corresponds closely to the distinction of Metaph. 1.

Nussbaum locates in Plato’s Gorgias the formal criterion distinguishing techne from mere empeiria—the requirement of a general logos of procedures—and traces its continuity with Aristotle’s Metaphysics I.

Martha C. Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy, 1986supporting

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Greek thought never succeeded in closing this gap between, on the one hand, science based on a logical ideal and, on the other, empeiria dependent on random procedures based on observation.

Vernant identifies the constitutive gap between rational science and observational empeiria as the structural fault line that prevented Greek technological thought from achieving systematic, progressive development.

Vernant, Jean-Pierre, Myth and Thought Among the Greeks, 1983supporting

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techne of, 94-7, 100, 105, 106-10, 290, 291-4, 295, 298, 300, 302, 303, 309, 310; see also Deliberation, practical, Intellect, Mania, Passions, Soul, Techne

This index entry maps the extensive cross-referencing of techne with rationality, deliberation, and soul in Nussbaum’s argument, indicating the term’s structural centrality to her account of practical reason.

Martha C. Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy, 1986supporting

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At this level of technological thought, there is no longer the archaic conception of animated instruments and living works of art… the tool, when directly manipulated by man, is still an extension of his own organs.

Vernant traces the developmental history of techne from archaic animism toward an organon-based technology, showing that even the secularized Greek tool remained bound to the body’s rhythms rather than achieving autonomous mechanical operation.

Vernant, Jean-Pierre, Myth and Thought Among the Greeks, 1983supporting

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and techne, see Techne; three problems 304, 305-6, 307-9, 310, 314, 320, 346, of, 3-7, 83, 104-5; working definition, 3… Universality of techne, see Techne

Nussbaum’s index confirms that techne is treated as a major structural concept throughout her work, explicitly linked to problems of universality, stability, and the good, and cross-referenced against tragedy, Plato, and Aristotle.

Martha C. Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy, 1986aside

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On the history of the concept of techne, see Rene Schaerer, Episteme et Techne: Etude sur les notions de connaissance et d’art d’Homere a Platon (Macon: Protat Freres, 1930).

Vernant’s bibliographic reference to Schaerer’s foundational philological study of techne and episteme signals the scholarly lineage within which his own historical analysis is situated.

Vernant, Jean-Pierre, Myth and Thought Among the Greeks, 1983aside

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