CHAPTER 2

First use of "techne" is in the Odyssey

Ta peirata: end, limit, boundary

• Use of techne and ta peirata together: tie art to its boundaries

In ancient contexts, techne is never reducible to an instrument or a means to an end

Definitions of Techne:

1. Never a static normative body of knowledge-dynamis (power), a trick/trap, stable enough to be taught and transferred but flexible enought to be adapted
2. Resists id with a normative subject; never "private" knowledge, never confined to a specific human or god, not the product of a unique genius
3. Marks a domain of intervention and invention; appears when one is outnumbered by foes or overpowered by force

God and Goddesses of Art

Associated w/ gods/goddesses who are id-ed w/ invention, craft production, and the disruption of lines of power

• Either caught b/w dual identities, crossing and recorssing the boundary b/w human and the gods, or defined by power of transformation

Prometheus

• Characteristics: trickster to the tragic hero
• gift of the power of art and technology (fire) is credited w/ precipitating the divison of labor that brings about complex social orgs like a city
• the craftsman

Hephaestus

• patron god of fire and craft
• has curved feet-->polymorphic character (associates himself w/ a crab) caught b/w identities

Hermes

• Messenger god, associated w/ invention
• Cunning crafty intelligence--> trickster (part of techne)

Metis

• Power of metamorphisis (dual identities--part of techne)

Athena

• Armed goddesses who oversees city, the crafts, and the arts
• Androgynous figure (double identity? both male traits and female traits)

Hephaestus and the Bonds of Love and Art

• Shows how techne shifts a balance of power and reverses techne
• Hephaestus =cunning/trickster-like when he made the trap for Aphrodite and Ares (cheating on Hephaestus)
• His art transforms Aphro and Ares desire into bondage
• Moral summarizes the value of techne: even though Ares is a swift fast god and Heph has a handicap (his feet) craft helped Heph catch Ares

Power, Cunning, Intelligence, and Time

Earliest uses of techne (in Homer and Hesiod)-->convey the sense of trick or contrivance

Associated with apate: deception pg 53 describes many more associations

Foregrounded in the various uses of techne: economic value, location in culture

Techne has an important dimension in relation to subjectivity; Ex: used as nouns, verbs, etc

Techne used as a "class marker"--distinctions based on social classes

• As the artisan class specialized diff hierarchies dvlped within the class itself

Techne's value/class status dependent upon one's perspective

Metis-different kind of reasoning, "cunning intelligence" "flair, wisdom, forethought, subtlety of mind, deception, resourcefulness, etc."

• Applied to situations which are transient, shifting, disconcerting, and ambiguous

Kairos is the time associated w/ techne

Deploying an art at the "right moment" in situations is difficult/sign of a true rhetor

"Knowing what" and "knowing when" are the heart of kairos

Rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion

Arts of Resistance and Transformation

Bia and kratos refer to bodily strength

• Kratos power over" either subjects or another force
• Bia is associated with compulsion

Associated w/ fraud and sometimes set against the alternative power of persuasive speech
Ananke: necessity, but also force, constraint

Used with moira when referring to a limit or boundary that techne is challenging
Moira: generally associated to fate; however its meanings vary

References to moira as a redistributed portion are not confined to myth

Aporia: no path, no exit

Poros-way out

Images that depict artistic invention are topographical

• Refer to paths, places roads (poros denots a means or passageway)
• hodos: a way,road, method, system

CHAPTER 3

Techne is frequently defined against physis (nature), automaton (spontaneity), and tyche (chance)

Techne/ology, Science, and Ancient Medicine

Ancient techne doesn't allow us to use our common wisdom about sci/tech

• The concept of pure sci or tech didn't really exist in ancient Greek

Relationships b/w Greek science, dialectic, and rhetoric

• Ex: logoi (arguing both sides of an issue)

Science did matter to ancient Greeks

Arts of the physician and rhetor overlapped at many points

• Both known as technai

Traces of Aristotle's four causes (material, formal, final, and efficient) were consistent with earlier treatments of techne

Both Aristotle and Plato have differing conceptions of techne but agree on the primacy of philosophy

Epistemological boundaries are equivalent to social boundaries in techne as well as a sense of theoretical knowledge as a spectacle is part of

• Important in understanding the ancient conception of theoretical knowledge
• Theoria (theory)- concerned w/ sight but it is sight as a perspectival "gaze" not in regards to vision

Empeiria most clearly distinguishes techne from ancient speculative traditions

• Empeiria: experience, practice, craft

Aristotle insists that this capacity to recall, combine, and evaluate is the source of art and the critical difference b/w humankind and animals

The Interstices of Nature, Spontaneity, and Chance

Most persistent limit imposed on techne has been that of nature

• The boundary b/w nature and culture is the product of negotiation; nature's borders are a provisional stopping point in the negotiation

Aristotle depicts an esp complex relationship b/w art and nature

• Physis= completely dependent on techne

Aristotle also uses techne to distinguish form and matter-or formal and material causes

Art imitates the action of nature

• Like nature, art is "making for a purpose"

He also acknowledges that there must be at least two different kinds

• Art that determines the structure/dimensions of the house must be differ from the art used in making bricks and beams

Aristotle's def of physis is hard to define

To automaton=translated to "the self-acting, spontaneous"

• Reaches a limit of techne bc it often refers to a phenomenon/domain that does not yet admit human understanding or intervention

Tyche marks a limit of art, but it marks it in an intricate way

• Tyche=chance (also, act of god, act of a human being, agent or cause beyond human control)

Tyche often refers to a point of indeterminacy that cam be exploited by techne

• Also a limit of knowledge and indeter. that may be exploited

Aristotle's meaning of tyche shift slightly depending on their content (def's up above^^)

Fuzzy logic: everything is a matter of degree, something may "both be" or "not be"