What Is Techne? Kelly Pender

• Techne, according to some, consists of the worst elements of humanism.
• Techne, according to others, provides a progressive form of cultural critique or a post-humanist means of rhetorical invention.
• Definitions for techne are epistemological if they designate criteria that must be met in order for knowledge to attain a label of technical according to a particular definition.
• Plato: to be called techne, knowledge must be amenable to precise analysis (itemization and organization)
• paradigmatic - serving as a typical example of something
• Hippocratic author: The effort to establish medicine is techne despite not having attained exactness in every detail because the discoveries come from inquiry and conducted experiments and not chance.
• Definitions for techne are axiological if they designate the kind of value a particular definition attributes under its purview.
• The goal of a particular techne is always the product is produces, not the activity producing it.
• Aristotle: The instrumentality of techne distinguishes it from theoretical and practical knowledge.
• Heidegger: Techne is a mode of bringing forth into unconcealment that allows the being of things to shine forth.
• Heidegger: Techne is not the making of equipment. It has non-instrumental value.
• Five definitions given by Pender:
1. Techne as a "how-to" guide or handbook
2. Techne as a rational ability to effect a useful result
3. Techne as a means of inventing new social possibilities
4. Techne as a means of producing resources
5. Techne as a non-instrumental mode of bringing forth
• Definition 1. "How-To" Guide or Handbook
• Highly organized rules, techniques, or stock examples to give readers basic knowledge about some aspect of rhetoric.
• Plato and Aristotle did not like because the absence of theoretical discussion.
• Plato, Aristotle: Real techne tries to impart a more comprehensive understanding of what causes rhetorical success and failure.
• Plato: Art without understanding of causes is not art.
• Aristotle: Teaching rhetoric with a handbook is like offering a man with foot pain shoes instead of teaching him the techne of shoemaking.
• Quintilian: Writers started to use "techne" in the titles of their rhetorical handbooks to compare it to shoemaking.
• Only superficial elements of rhetoric fit this epistemological definition of techne.
• Isocrates rejected hard and fast rules of handbook definition of techne.
• Isocrates viewed himself as a teacher of discursive arts.
• Isocrates focues on the situational nature of rhetoric.
• Gadamer: You cannot teach knowledge about a situation-dependent activity.
• Gadamer: Limited and incomplete nature of knowledge makes techne as found in handbooks as objectifying and decontextualized.
• Gadamer: Techne is a decontextualizing form of knowledge: if you apply the knowledge, you lose the context.
• Petraglia: Students need to learn to write within specialized domains and not just the generic writing skills offered by the techne tradition.
• Petraglia: Techne centered classrooms are an impediment to a richer rhetorical education.
• Definition 2. A Rational Ability To Effect A Useful Result
• Aristotle: Art is "a state of capicity to make, involving a true course of reasoning."
• Aristotle's three part theory of knowledge: episteme (theoretical knowledge), techne (productive knowledge), and praxis (practical knowledge)
• Instrumentality distinguishes techne from episteme and praxis.
• Techne is knowledge about things, that exists only in order to accomplish or produce something.
• Methods, techniques, and skills are important parts of techne, but they must be accompanied by a deeper, more comprehensive understanding of the causes of success and failure to be considered genuine techne.
• Understanding allows the artist to teach his art and removes him from dependence of habit and chance, which is different from just having a knack (unreflective habit attained through practice).
• Socrates: Rhetoric is a knack, and knacks are ethically inferior to technai.
• Knacks aim to be pleasurable, techne aims to be good (useful).
• Knacks are epistemologically inferior because they are irrational. Techne is rational.
• Rational means knowable, which means you can understand how each component work together to produce a specific result.
• Knowable allows an artist to possess forethought.
• Wild: Techne is the complete permeation of action by plan.
• Aristotle: In medicine, if you know the why and the cause of the treatment, you are more honorable and wiser than someone who can heal without knowing what they do.
• Aristotle: Rhetoric can be observed, described, taught, and then applied across a number of situations.
• New classicists (60s, 70s, 80s) argue rhetoric should be taught as a techne.
• Jennings steps for innovative thinking: manipulate (1) items sensed, (2) relationships perceived, and (3) their own viewpoint.
• It is the artist's ability to make universal judgments that allows her to take a specific situation into account. (Example: knowing how different chemotherapies affect cancer cells, allowing for a specific treatment for a specific patient.)
• Results can be products (tables, chalices, boats) or they can be conditions (health, peace, safe passage).
• Products deal with stable materials while conditions deal with unstable materials.
• Stochastic techne deals with conditions, nonstochastic techne deals with products.
• Nussbaum: Situation is more important for stochaic techne. (Example: politician tries to negotiate peace without know what everyone is aiming for.)
• Stochastic techne cannot be held to the same epistemological standards as nonstochastic techne -- a much lower standard than the handbook traditon.
• Definition 3. A Means of Inventing New Social Possibilities
• New Social Possibilities: (1) those that happen as a result of an exchange of power, (2) those that happen as a result of cultural critique
• Techne's instrumentality automatically implies an exchange between the maker and the user of an artistic product. (A carpenter does not build a table for the table's sake.)
• The aristocratic social order distributed privileges by birth. Arts (navigation, metallurgy, rhetoric) allowed for social mobility not otherwise possible.
• Techne makes recognizing social identities more difficult, blurring social classes.
• Techne created "mutants," people born as one thing and trasmorgrified into another.
• transmorgrify - transform in a surprising or magical way
• dolie techne - trap art
• A fear of techne was its ability to trick or deceive, like an octopus camouflaging itself as a rock.
• Techne as a transformation of social order requires experiential knowledge, risiding in the muscles and nerves instead of learned information.
• Experiential knowledge requires responding to the kairos of the situation.
• kairos - the right moment, the critical moment
• Deploying an art depends on the ability of the artist to recognize the opportune moment, which cannot be taught -- it must be ingrained in the artist.
• "techne-metis" - cunning intelligence
• Metis operates in contingent situations without rules for success or established methods.
• Techne-metis is still not mysterious genius or unteachable talent. Instead, principles must work in concert with the demands of a particular situation.
• Two ways to maintain social conditions: First order strategies are formalized by explicit principles. Second order strategies (arts) maintain relationships.
• Atwill: Technai arises "when a boundary between insider and outsider is marked--when agents who have not been socialized into the practices of certain rhetorical situations must learn by art what those who have long been in those situations have done by habit."
• Techne is explicit and teachable, but it does call into question what it makes explicit and what it teaches. It enables cultural critique and becomes the means by which new social possibilities are invented.
• Definition 4. A Means of Producing Resources
• There is no end to the production process. Every product is or has the possibility to become a means in future rounds of production.
• poiesis ("to make") - the process of creating something new through imagination, intellect, or art
• Heidegger: Techne is a form of poiesis, bringing-forth things that cannot come into existence on their own.
• Ge-stell - what lies behind or beneath modern technology
• Oversimplified view of writing: a set of techniques or methods of achieving certain goals or ends established by human beings. This is symptomatic of "technological thinking" where humans see their primary task as the control and regulation of earth's resources.
• "homo faber" - the concept that human beings are able to control their fate and their environment as a result of the use of tools
• Critique of homo faber: a fundamental ability of a society of craftsmen to understand the difference between utility and meaningfulness.
• A society of craftsmen is a society dedicated to the fabrication of resources -- things that will go on to become means in other rounds of production.
• In this society, utility and usefulness become the standard on which all activities are judged.
• Society cannot distinguish "in order to" and "for the sake of" causing a state of meaninglessness.
• Meager: genius of humans is to look at a forest and see a village of houses, or at a deer and see a shirt, a pair of shoes, and a week's meals.
• Techne has amassed destructive powers.
• Definitoin 5. A Non-Instrumental Mode of Bringing-Forth
• The opposite of a means of producing resources: summoning the world from the void is a non-instrumental mode of bringing-forth.
• The process of prodution is bringing-forth something from concealment into unconcealment.
• "physis" - self-blossoming emergence
• Production in terms of techne is to allow it's "emerging power" to shine forth.
• "telos" - end, purpose, goal
• A product's telos plays a key role in how it comes into appearance.
• Technical knowledge may need to be transferable across situations, but it will also need to undergo modification when enacted within a particular situation in order to produce specialized rather than generic strategies for writing.