Téchnê

Téchnê Is Art

The original meaning of téchnê is ‘art’. Like the Latin ars and the English ‘art’, it carries double meanings. Ars and téchnê indicate what a modern ‘artist’, and also what an ‘artisan’ and a ‘technician’, does. On the one hand, it indicates something creative and expressive for which there hardly exist clear rules and where skilful and mindful discretion is decisive. On the other hand, it indicates something technical, in other words something which by definition is strictly rule-based, drill-based and almost mechanical. Téchnê is both art and craft, which modern languages tend to separate. Every artist may need to be an artisan, and an artisan should preferably be an artist as well. But today, poetry belongs to the creative and expressive pole, while everything technical belongs to the rule-following, drill-based and mechanical pole of the old téchnê.

Téchnê Is a Way of Reasoning

With Aristotle, téchnê is a specific way of using lógos, in other words, a way of reasoning or using reasoned speech. In a wide sense, téchnê is connected to any consciously intentional and knowledge-based activity provided with a method. A technitês was ‘an expert’, and téchnê could mean ‘articulate, skilled expertise in any field or subject’. According to Aristotle, there are several ways of using lógos. Finished science requires deduction. Research or unfinished science works dialectically or dialogically Both have theoretical aims. In a different ‘department’, there was phrónêsis, which is deliberative (bouleútikê), and téchnê, which is mainly calculative (logistikê or logismós). Both téchnê and phrónêsis are non-theoretical in an Aristotelian sense, since they aim at and deal with what changes or is brought into existence, depending on what we ourselves do. They concern things that one can produce and control, in other words, choose, decide on, initiate, change, develop or stop so that the variation depends on people. Still, their ways of bringing about change and using lógos differ.

Téchnê Immanent to Making and Using

In a narrower sense, téchnê is inherent to the specific kind of knowing or activity called poíêsis (‘making’, ‘creating’ or ‘bringing forth’) and, by analogy, to khrêsis (‘using’), in other words, to the ability to manipulate, move and form external objects (as materials or as tools) according to the preconceived concepts, aims and plans of a separate user, artisan or artist and where the end and aim is an ‘artefact’, a product or condition formally separate from and external to the process of producing it or arriving. Having built a house, the process stops; having reached your destination by car, you stop using it. Poíêsis could be tacit and without lógos. Téchnê is the specific form of reasoning and articulation connected to poíêsis. Thus, téchnê and poíêsis indicate something ‘artificial’, in other words, something made by art, something non-natural, something that does not happen naturally or by itself. But Aristotle also emphasizes that true art does not go against nature but supports and complements it. Téchnê may restore nature where nature has gone astray, as in the best forms of medical practice where the artificial in a sense exceeds nature. Nature (phúsis) and téchnê differ in that natural change springs from forces, sources and principles internal to the changed object while téchnê imposes change upon the object from the outside.

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