themselves.1
The ancient Greek term “techne” ranged widely in meaning.2 As a matter of epistemological concern, techne could evoke the notion of shrewdness and trickery, thus making it conceptually akin to metis (cunning intelligence) and its clever ruses. On some occasions it could be used interchangeably with episteme (a body of ideas deemed to be intellectually certain) and consequently taken as a model for the type of superior knowledge toward which the philosopher aspired. More typically, techne meant productive or practical, rather than theoretical or speculative, knowledge. For the most part it was conceived as the authoritative but not always absolutely dependable knowledge required to make or do something limited, precise, and clearly defined with acknowledged expertise. Along these lines, the term “techne” was used as a synonym for the special know-how of some skill. It could be a basic manual skill: house building and carpentry, for instance—the sort of routine, lower-order, banausic (vulgar) skill that Plato repeatedly holds up to prefigure, by way of analogy, the clear, purposive, and goal-oriented knowledge that deals with abstractions and speculative philosophy.3 It could also be a complex demanding skill: rhetoric, medicine, military strategy, and statecraft, for instance—the sort of higher-order, open-ended, and refined skill that Aristotle identifies both with the practical knowledge of phronesis (prudence) and with the act of “doing,” praxis, rather than “making,” poiesis.4 Furthermore, while on the one hand techne is often associated with hard-and-fast rules and handbooks, on the other hand it could also demand an acumen for improvisation, require an exquisite sensitivity to the contingency of opportunity, assume an ability to apply general principles to the particulars of an occasion, and presume a talent receptive to extensive training and professional development. Additionally, there are some fundamental assumptions about a techne worth emphasizing from the outset. A techne as a form of specialized knowledge linked the particular to the universal, whereas the knowledge garnered from only experience dealt just with particulars. A techne served as a means to an end rather than as an end in itself. It was never used, say, for its own sake or appreciated as such. A techne was process- and goal-oriented in a manner that was conceived as organic, ordered, and purposive. For this reason it was sometimes likened to the workings of Nature in the very moment that it allowed people to acquire some control over Nature and independence from it, as well as, ideally, from the gods and fate. And the persons possessing a techne could provide a rational account of the techne itself. Those very persons, that is, could cogently explain the techne’s subject matter, its causes and ends, the nature of the knowledge associated with it, and why certain decisions were made to achieve predetermined results by adhering to a correct, calculated course of action.
There were two dominant but related strands of thought about techne operating in ancient Greece, although both strands developed and found expression at different times as they evolved, and the distinction between the two depended primarily on the nature of the techne in question. According to one strand of thought, someone with a techne possessed for the most part completely dependable knowledge about something very specific. He or she could therefore produce whatever was made or done and reliably guarantee that it would be effective and the same over time. A builder, whose craft was associated with the concept of techne from the outset (a view still captured in the notion of the “architect” as an “arch-technician”),5 could confidently construct a house that would not fall down, barring accidents of nature or unanticipated acts of human destruction, and the house could be readily duplicated, assuming the materials and geographies of the locations remained the same or similar in nature. According to another strand of thought, someone with a conjectural (stochastic) techne, as opposed to an “exact” one such as that involved in building houses, did not possess infallible knowledge but relied on educated yet still precarious guesswork—rules of thumb that allowed for flexibility, openness, and an ability to adapt to the nuances of the materials employed and the unpredictability of coping with particulars in a world of constant flux.6 He or she therefore could not absolutely guarantee that the result of applying a techne would always be effective or the same over time, even if the body of knowledge associated with the techne was viewed as complete and certain with respect to the assigned task. A physician could prescribe drugs for patients with the same diagnosed illness, but in no way could the physician assure all of them that they would survive, much less guarantee that patients with life-threatening ailments would be cured. Similarly, a general could never absolutely guarantee that his strategy for a military campaign would always succeed, any more than a rhetor could promise that he would always persuade and move the audience toward an anticipated and desired goal by appealing simultaneously to people’s occasionally unreceptive hearts and minds. Either way, whether we are talking about a techne conceived as an “exact” or “stochastic” form of knowledge, which is to say as one that is presumed to be completely or just dependably reliable, possessing a techne for the ancient Greeks allowed them to have a significant measure of control over chance (tuche) through the conscious application of reason in a precise manner to a determinate subject matter.
Since the body of knowledge of a techne had to be realized in some form or manner, a techne was associated with accomplished performance (actually playing Bach well over and over again, say) rather than just imagined competence (thinking one can always play Bach well but consistently failing to keep time). It had to be put into action, its potentiality made manifest so that it could be verified as effective applied knowledge. Additionally, what made a techne a techne—whether the outcome of exercising it was viewed as absolutely reliable or not—is that the form of knowledge associated with it was communicable. A techne was therefore teachable in a rational, but not necessarily always systematic, way: sometimes through rules and precepts, sometimes through examples or experience, sometimes through a process of imitation, sometimes in a direct, intimate, and highly personal manner. Furthermore, the persons who possessed a techne needed to be viewed as authoritative and masterful. In sociological terms, they enjoyed a jurisdictional claim over a clear, distinct, and conceptually circumscribed field of knowledge. Thus the persons who possessed a techne potentially held a privileged position in society, particularly within the city-states of ancient Greece, because they could explain the rational content of a techne and actualize it as only an expert dependably could. People possessing a techne in this respect were “professors” insofar as they could “profess” credible knowledge that was publicly valued, that ostensibly fulfilled a social need through the reliable and reproducible services performed, that they could take some pride in as they made use of their acknowledged expertise as a form of worthy work, and that functioned in a practical way as an “invitation for work.”7
There are also some noticeable limitations associated with the concept of techne, and they raise important issues about ancient Greek thought and life generally. A techne as a form of specialized knowledge was viewed as useful and beneficial to society, but more often than not it was taken to be neither moral nor immoral but amoral. In a phrase, it was ethically limited in that it was morally ambiguous. It all depended on not only the nature of the techne in question but also how the techne was used and thus on the underlying, predetermined character of the person applying it. Additionally, some people putting into practice a techne ineluctably found themselves in a precarious position within the polis. Even in the most favorable of times, some remained vulnerable to attacks of quackery since in many instances there were no formal schools for accrediting them and thus no socially accepted mechanisms either for policing the jurisdictional boundaries of what they claimed they knew how to do or for assuring institutional longevity and support for what they did.8 Furthermore, discussions as to whether some activities were or were not technai, such as those dedicated to medicine and rhetoric, only served to highlight the inherent risks involved in attempting to do anything with real confidence in an uncertain, vulnerable world governed by chance and fate, even as those discussions sought to assert some control over the contingency of occasion through the mastery afforded by possessing a techne. What is more, discussions about techne also revealed much about the limits of educability—issues that will reappear, as we shall see, in various guises in the Italian Renaissance. Can all people possess a techne? What are the prerequisites? Should it be inculcated through precepts, through
