Paedia-referred to the rearing and education of the ideal member of the polis.
Introduction
"My purpose in this book is to set the ancient logon techne tradition against the normalizing tendencies of the Western humanist tradition of the liberal arts. As I interpret it, this ancient rhetorical tradition was far more concerned with challenging and recalculating standards of value than with protecting a specific set of values from the forces of time and circumstance."
"As I insist throughout the book, this depiction of techne is as heuristic as it is descriptive."
"Rather, the importance of the techne tradition lies in its distinctive differences from liberal arts traditions on three specific points"
- A techne is never a representational body of knowledge
- A techne resists identification with a static, normative subject.
- Techne marks a domain of human intervention and invention.
"One part of my argument is that the Athenian citizen, extricated from time and circumstance, served as a model for the humanist subject."
- However, our appropriation of the Athenian model as a humanist model takes out of context the environment from which that model arose, an environment situated in equality only of law, not of proportion.
"At issue are the character of the social identities of gender, race, and class and the nature of the social ties by which we are bound as families, communities, states, and nations."
"Indeed, one of the primary purposes of this book is to point to new ways of recalculating the value of difference and identity."
Chapter I: Rhetoric, Humanism, and the Liberal Arts
"My argument in its most general terms is that Tacitus and Quintilian were referring to not only two different rhetorical traditions but also two different--and virtually incommensurable--epistemological traditions: a humanist-liberal arts tradition, illustrated by Quintilian, which was grounded in normative conceptions of knowledge and subjectivity; and an older model of knowledge identified with techne (commonly translated as 'art'), which appears in the rhetorical traditions of Protagoras, Isocrates, and Aristotle" (5).
"Aristotle refused to accept Plato's distinction between true and false arts."
"Productive knowledge, however, included a wide range of arts: medicine, military strategy, architecture, poetics, and--as I argue--rhetoric" (6).
"Rhetoric as a techne became identified largely with the handbook tradition--a neutral tool in service to the higher causes of ethics, politics, or philosophy, whereas productive knowledge largely disappeared as an epistemological category, emerging primarily as it became identified with arts and crafts that produce a material 'product'" (6).
"The defining characteristics, however, remain relatively stable:
- A techne is never a representational body of knowledge-A techne is described as a dynamis (or power) and a set of transferable strategies, both contingent on situation and purpose. A techne neither represents reality not encompasses a set of deductive postulates.
- A techne resists identification with a static, normative subject.--there are no well-defined boundaries between the subject and knowledge...it is difficult, if not impossible, to make techne conform to either Plato's equation of knowledge and virtue or to Quintilian's vir bonus (good man)
- Techne marks a domain of human intervention and invention.--In contrast to philosophical knowledge, a techne is defined by its relation to situation and time. A techne is knowledge as production, not product; intervention and articulation, rather than representation.
"humanism is 'institutions' more than a coherent philosophy; it is books, methodologies, curricula, departmental divisions, funding programs, professional organizations, and methods of evaluating professional competence" (6).
"But 'humanism' as a coherent perspective is always something constituted 'after the fact,' a construction of the past in the rhetorical present" (8).
"For our purposes, humanism will refer to the following restricted set of terms and precepts:
- Human--can be defined by common, essential features that transcend gender, culture, and history...Though this model is defined by its proposed universality, the ideal features by which it is characterized are not present in every subject. The humanities are a means of inculcating or actualizing these features in 'the individual'" (9).
- Knowledge: Knowledge can be extricated both from the subject and from relations of power and economic exchange.
- Classical humanism frequently depicts knowledge as an attribute of the knowing subject, the 'actualization' of knowledge in the mind...concerned with the construction of the character.
- Scientific or philosophical humanism generally depicts knowledge as a coherent description of an object or a practice...centrally concerned with demarcating an object of study and securing conditions under which one might claim that objective description is possible.
- Value--value is related to knowledge and man. Knowledge is conceived as valuable either as a means to the end of human fulfillment or as an end in itself. Thus, the humanist scale of value takes the form of a chain of equivalences between 'man,' knowledge, and value.
"What we can investigate are points of incommensurability between humanism and the paradigm of techne" (10).
"My primary assumption is that a model of knowledge always brings with it a corresponding model of subjectivity--and, therefore, social relations...orders of knowledge are invariably tied to social, political, and economic orders...humanism, as a whole, has retained the Platonic distinction between knowledge, the subject, and value...the lexicon of the humanities is the lexicon of philosophy...the scholarly neglect of Aristotle's domain of productive knowledge bears witness to the power of the philosophical paradigm to obscure alternative, situated standards of knowledge and value" (11).
--Critiquing Humanism from Within the Humanities
"From the late 1960s on, humanities departments have turned into battlegrounds for conflicts concerning the values and exemplars of the humanist tradition" (12).
"current revaluations of the humanities...involve a matrix of intangible cultural boundaries, which...secures not only orders of knowledge but also social, political, and economic orders...What is at stake are both the ability of the humanist paradigm to represent social difference and its very role in securing social, political, and economic orders" (13).
--The Historical Search for "Humanism"
Atwill spends some time going over different historical definitions of the humanities but notes that "these definitions of humanism and the humanities are better characterized as a set of equivalences: 'man' is culture's highest value, 'man' comes to know and experience that value in the pursuit of humanistic knowledge, and the distinctive features of 'man' are the object of that pursuit, the subject of knowledge" (17).
"These scholars all agree that the business of the humanities is not so much the dissemination of knowledge or competencies as it is the production of a particular 'kind' of subject...the humanities reflect human value; human value is inculcated through the humanities" (18).
Protoagoras's dictum that "man is the measure of all things" is misleading because "Protagoras was referring to 'man' in particular rather than 'man' in general, 'each individual man,...not the human race or mankind taken as a single entity'" (18).
--Universalizing the Particular
"One of the most critical paradoxes of the humanist paradigm is the transformation of a specific, historical subject into a universal form. Despite their claims to universality, humanist treatises frequently locate that subject in a particular historical moment and in a specific gender, class structure, and race" (23).
--Privatizing the Public
"Atwill works against Jaeger's view that the humanities have a 'directive impetus'; they must be used daily in that process of transformation and molding. Greece's special contribution to that process is the recognition that 'education means deliberately moulding human character in accordance with an idea.'" (25).
"If as Jaeger argues, the beginning of Greek history was the genesis of the notion that 'each soul is in itself an end of infinite value' and a 'law to himself,' then the educator functions to oversee and enforce the law" (25).
"recognizing those [Jaeger's] ideals with the social and political exigencies of the present leads to several problems" (25).
"If Plato's subject is defined by philosophical knowledge and virtue, then Isocrates' subject is defined by honor and esteem. Both honor and esteem, however, are accrued only by the rhetor's successful intervention in the affairs of the polis. They are the product of the rhetor's ability to seize the advantage in a given situation--to overreach and redefine boundaries that are social, political, and economic. That act of overreaching changes not only the polis but also the rhetor, since for Isocrates there is little distinction between public rhetorical ethos and private character" (26-27).
"The goal of Isocrates pedagogy is successful intervention in the exigencies of the polis, and in those acts of intervention the rhetor's ethos is both a product and a tool" (28).
"Plato and Isocrates would appear to agree on one point: for both 'philosophers,' neither the subjects not the objects of knowledge are defined by inherent features; rather they are defined by their place in a set of social, political, and economic relations" (28).
"In both cases, education [Athenian education] is defined less by curricula than by the class characteristics of the 'learner.' Moreover, despite the fact that humanist treatises frequently assert that the humanities aim to 'democratize' virtue, virtue retains its identification with a set of values far more concerned with markers of class than with the everyday needs of the polis" (29).
--Rhetoric and Humanism
"Perhaps the most critical question facing traditional humanism is the extent to which it remains committed to the production of a normative subject, a subject designed to embody and reproduce specific cultural values and social relations rather than examine and transform them" (29).
"Traditions of humanism persist that place their origins in the rhetoric of Rome, not the philosophy of Greece, and in the paideia of Cicero and Quintilian, not Socrates.
Atwill contends that what we call humanism in the humanities is actually derived from a mixture of Greek and Roman influence, which are at times at odds with one another. Our mixing of the two shows how Jaegers "philosophical cast" is more diverse, subjective, and given to fluctuation than we think. Moreover, the paideia traditions concern building character through education, and both models have been used to support humanist education, but...
"When does rhetoric's concern with ethos, or character, become a project of producing a normative subject? In other words, is Cicero's 'ideal orator' equivalent to Quintilian's vir bonus?" (30). Can we say that there is a unified concern for building ethos through humanism if the humanism is derived from different sources?
Atwill acknowledges that defining rhetoric in relation to virtue is impossible, but we can examine "whether these traditions reclaim for rhetoric the social and political intervention embodied in Protagoras's political techne, Isocrates' logon techne, and Aristotle's conception of productive knowledge" (31).
"What Crane's interpretation of classical rhetoric ignores is the possibility that Quintilian's assertion--that the objective of a rhetorical education is the production of the vir bonus--was a radical reorientation of the ends of rhetoric" (31),
"Rather than providing strategies for the acts of social and political intervention, rhetoric would provide the curricular content for a developmental process of education" (31-32).
"Though Aristotle asserts in the Rhetoric that 'the true and the just are by nature stranger than their opposites,' he also offers a compendium of topics, advising the student of rhetoric to take whichever 'argument is useful.' Aristotle's Rhetoric outlines an 'art' of ethos, not an ethical subject or an ethical and political ideal. Moreover, though Aristotle maintains that rhetoric is a rational art, what it offers are strategies for the appeal to reason, not a static body of philosophical knowledge, apprehended by a stable, knowing subject. Static subjects and objects of knowledge are the concerns of philosophy; determining the means to the end of 'the good life' is the business of ethics and politics, not rhetoric" (32).
Roman rhetoric shifted its focus moving from Cicero to Quintilian. "The effects of this transformation of rhetoric from an art of social and political intervention into the content of a liberal arts education is further underscored by Quintilian's descriptions of the types and purposes of rhetoric" (33).
Quintilian accepts Aristotle belief that rhetoric exists within context time and ends (e.g. deliberative-assembly, future, improve society). Quintilian added that "the orator must 'instruct, move and charm his hearer'" (33).
"The transformation we find in Quintilian would seem to negate any serious claim that the rhetorical humanist paideia preserved rhetoric's social and political function" (35).
--Cicero's Paideia and Quintilian's Vir Bonus
"Cicero's paideia is often viewed too simply as broad learning or cultural funding that yield the exemplary orator. Such interpretations tent to idealize the orator, transforming him into a hero of culture rather than a model of rhetorical success" (35).
"Though Cicero clearly delineates the 'ideal orator,' Cicero's ideal is never exclusively a model of knowledge and virtue: he is also a model of rhetorical success" (37).
"By philosophical standards, Ciceronian rhetoric...remains committed to rhetorical success, not ideal models...Although rhetorical success may be enhanced by a virtuous character, virtuous character without rhetorical success would be no model of virtue at all" (38).
--Renaissance Civic Humanism and Political Techne
"The Renaissance humanism of Europe is usually characterized as the recovery of rhetoric's civic function and the expression of civic virtue's affinity with a literary education" (38-39).
"The argument at large is that Renaissance humanism served in part to 'depoliticize' patterns of economic distribution" (39).
"on the whole, humanist education gave a new elite 'an indelible cultural seal of superiority,' while inculcating in 'lesser members' a 'properly docile attitude towards authority" (39-40).
--Productive Knowledge and the Democratization of Virtue
"As we shall see, the disciplinary character of rhetoric in nineteenth and twentieth century interpretations of Aristotelian rhetoric has been largely determined by philosophy, generally precluding rhetoric's reformation as a political techne, a logon techne, or productive knowledge" (40).
"On the one hand, as long as the rhetorical paideia promised to produce a normative subject, that subject would both embody and reproduce existing lines of power. On the other hand, more philosophical traditions of rhetoric would produce normative bodies of knowledge and normative contingent social relations and universalizing specific class values...At stake is the very character of the humanist paradigm and the liberal arts" (41).
"One broad rationalization for humanism's universalization of specific set of class values has been the promise of 'democratizing' virtue...this commitment has done more to subvert than to secure democracy" (41).
"those who have ears to hear are likely to be those who already embody dominant standards of 'human greatness'; and those who do not hear are responsible for their own failure to ascend the ladder of liberal virtue" (43).
"As long as both knowledge and subjectivity are 'things' that can be extricated from temporal social, political, and economic relations, humanism's key terms remain unchanged. Normalized subjects will continue to reproduce existing lines or power, and normalized bodies of knowledge--whether empirically objective or philosophically universal--will naturalize contingent social realities" (44).
"The question that persists is whether contemporary challenges to the humanist paradigm should lead us either to abandon the notion of excellence or to reformulate the term in which it has been cast" (44).
"Is it possible to envision the humanist project as the democratization not of virtue but of 'advantage' [a la Isocrates], the negotiation and invention of diverse standards of value, subjectivity, and knowledge? Only those who insist that value be assessed by a single historical scale would fear that such an alternative would lead to the death of excellence and virtue. Indeed, it is more likely that it is the suppression of such alternatives that accounts for the poverty of virtue in our own time" (45-46).
Prelude to chapter 2: "Indeed, rather than resisting the paradox of critique --that the past we critique exists only in the present--I embrace that paradox as the rhetorical purpose of this account: to define a past that might be used in responding to the epistemological and ethical crises of the present" (46).
Chapter Two: Techne and the Transformation of Limits
"In this chapter I begin to create a context for the ancient conception of techne by outlining its mythic traditions and several of the terms by which it is defined. Some of the terms, such as metis and kairos, are part of a lexicon that defines techne as a model of knowledge with a distinctive form of intelligence and sense of time. That lexicon also includes forces and limits against which techne is defined: bia (compulsion), kratos (force), ananke (necessity), and moira (fate). Techne challenges those forces and limits with its power to discover (heuriskein) and invent new pathos (poroi)." (48).
--God and Goddesses of Art
"techne is associated with other gods and goddesses who are identified with invention, craft production, and the disruption of lines of power. The one characteristic shared by these deities is an ambiguity of identity. They are either caught between dual identities, as is Prometheus, crossing and recrossing the boundary between humankind and the gods, or like Metis, they are defined by the power of transformation itself" (49).
Prometheus
His name means forethought. "Prometheus's gift of the power of art and technology (symbalized by fire) is credited with precipitating the division of labor that brings about complex social organizations, such as the city" (49).
Hephaestus
"Whereas Prometheus is the archetypal craftsman, Hephaestus is the patron god of fire and craft...He is the son of Zeus and Hera, banished from heaven by his mother. In Hesiod's version of the Prometheus myth, he appears as the artisan who crafts the first woman, Pandora, whereas in Homer's Odyssey, he is husband to Aphrodite" (50).
Hermes
"Hermes is known as the messenger god, hence identified with good speaking or oratory. He is also associated with invention" (50).
Metis
"The goddess Metis is described as 'counsel personified'...Metis's unique character lies in her power of metamorphosis" (50).
Athena
Athena "is the armed goddess who oversees cities and the crafts and arts...She is an androgynous figure...While other texts will illustrate the potential of techne as a set of teachable skills to be transferred or 'exchanged,' the Homeric Athena underscores the economic value of techne" (51).
--Hephaestus and the Bonds of Love and Art
The excerpted story from Odyssey, "it reinscribes two persistent themes regarding techne. Art makes up for a lack" (52).
--Power, Cunning Intelligence, and Time
"Techne also refers to a craft or trade that can generate economic capital...'Technology' is an obvious cognate of techne, which in present usage generally marks the splintering of techne into craft, as opposed to high art, and technical knowledge as instrumental means. These distinctions, however, were largely ignored in ancient traditions of techne. Generally foregrounded in the various uses of techne are its economic value and its location in culture as opposed to nature" (53).
Tehchne is derived from verbs that mean "to fabricate," "to produce," and "to construct." It is also derived from nouns that mean "tool"or "instrucment."
"In other words the organon [techne as tool] 'transmits and amplifies the force of man.' Both descriptions suggest that techne is inseparable from the subject it enables, and, reciprocally, the intervention enabled by techne redefines the subject" (54).
"As this discussion suggests, techne's value and class status were largely dependent on one's perspective...For Plato, techne referred to a kind of professional knowledge, directly opposed to the paideia of the freeman...Though in the Gorgias and in the Phaedrus Plato outlines his criteria for a true art, by the time those criteria are met, we are left with something that resembles philosophy far more than it does rhetoric" (55).
--Techne and Metis
"metis, a 'cunning intelligence' more akin to the 'shrewd and enterprising spirit' of the sophists thatn to the dialectical reasoning of Plato...metis: 'flair, wisdom, forethought, subtlety of mind, deception, resourcefulness, vigilance, opportunism, various skills, and experience acquired over the years...it is the sophist who, 'in contrast to the philospher..., embodies the scheming intelligence of the man of metis, plunged into the world of appearance and Becoming" (55).
Throughout Greek histories, metis is used as a synonym for techne.
"In contrast to philosophical nous, which is concerned with timeless principles, metis is 'applied to situations which are transient, shifting, disconcerting, and ambiguous, situations which do not lend themselves to precise measurement, exact calculation or rigorous logic.' Metis is associated with the indeterminancy of both subjects and objects. It is used to create deceptive identities, such as the Trojan Horse, that disguise 'inner character' with deceptive artifice" (56).
"Metis occurs throughout the stories of techne that we shall examine; the significance of techne often lies in the power of transformation that metis enables" (56).
--Techne and Kairos
"If metis is the intelligence identified with techne, then kairos is the time 'associated with techne'...Kairos signifies, on the one hand, the 'exact or critical time, season, opportunity,' but it can also mean 'advantage, profit'...the god [Kairos] is portrayed surreptitiously depressing one pan of the scales in his favor" (57).
Aristotle "insists that techne involves rational intellection, comparable with that in the sciences. The point on which Aristotle decisively distinguishes the rationality of techne from philosophical reasoning is its relationship to time. For both Plato and Aristotle, the highest and most true knowledge transcends time; it is knowledge about things that 'could not be otherwise' because the subjects of philosophical knowledge are immune to the contingencies of time and context. In contrast, the reasoning associated with metis and techne is explicitly temporal" (57).
"Deploying an art at the 'right moment' in a particular situation is the sign of the true rhetor, yet it is something that cannot be taught by explicit precepts or rules. Isocrates is especially sensitive to the notion that acquiring a 'sense' of the right way and right moment requires careful inculcation and the imitation of masters...The student does not simply imitate a discrete subjectivity but rather submits to the influence of a context that includes 'men,' texts, and actions" (58).
"the transmission of a techne has as much to do with constructing a subject as with transferring rhetorical strategies...'Knowing how' and 'knowing when' are at the heart of kairos, distinguishing techne from rule-governed activities that are less constrained by temporal conditions...What is at stake for the rhetor's performance is twofold. On the one hand, the successful performance of the rhetor who as appropriated both rules and proper timing is often a testimony to...his 'natural' ability...It is when art 'appears to disappear' that it has been most successfully appropriated--or transformed into 'nature.' On the other hand the unsuccessful rhetor who appropriates the rules without this practical sense of the 'right time' will only expose the 'inadequate' and 'unnatural' character of his art...Put more pointedly, decontextualized principles and rules are usually markers of the successful mastery of the art of 'going to school'; they point to success in a pedagogical context that only underscores the initial 'lack' in the rhetor" (59).
"A techne works together with the limits of 'what is'" (59).
"The successful rhetor understands and responds to the 'limits of a given case.' An art deployed at the 'right time,' however, may do more than redefine the limits of specific situations; it may also create alternative situations" (59-60).
--Arts of Resistance and Transformation
--Mitigating Forces and Power
"Though Hesiod concludes that techne will never overcome the forces of nature and the gods, the writer of the Hippocratic treatise maintains that techne transposes that relation of power so that nature is now compelled by art" (61).
"Though Plato questions the epistemological validity of the techne of persuasive speech, he does not underestimate its power...As we shall see in the Prometheus narratives, the art of effective change through words--or persuasion--is what distinguishes humankind not only from animals but also from the brutal and capricious gods" (62).
--Challenging the Boundaries of Necessity and Fate
"Although techne can mitigate lines of force and power, its most challenging boundaries may be ananke and moira. Generally translated as 'necessity,' ananke can also refer to 'force, constraint'...Both terms appear throughout the Prometheus narratives, where they frequently refer to a 'limit' or boundary that techne has challenged--sometimes successfully and sometimes not" (62).
"References to Moira appear throughout the Promethean narrative...Hesiod's tales embody an ancient doctrine of techne, whereby the 'arts of fire...symbolize the whole of man's endeavor to change his moira for the better by the skilful [sic] adjustment of means to ends" (64).
--Techne, Philosphical Inquiry, and the Invention of New paths
"The distinction between apoira as 'no exit' and poros as a 'way out' may mark the differences between philosophical and rhetorical traditions of inquiry and invention. Aporiai..."exemplars"...define the boundaries of a professional community...Solutions to specific political exigencies were not the objective of dialectic, in spite of the fact that those who were trained in dialectic likely possessed the cultural authority to wield significant political power...'poros' also denotes a means or passageway; it may refer as well to a contrivance or device--particularly one that provides a 'way out' of danger" (66).
"Topos/topoi, which define rhetorical invention, literally refer to 'place'/'places'. These topographical depictions persist into the Renaissance and beyond in various senses of 'commonplace'...'A place is some common distinctive mark of a thing by the help of which it is possible to discover readily what can be proven [or what is probable] with regard to any particular thing; or, as Cicero describes it, it is the seat of an argument.' Such form/content oppositions are difficult to find in the earliest depictions of techne" (67).
"In contrast to philosophical inquiry, a techne aims to create paths in uncharted territories--to help one find one's way in the dark. Similarly, the Hippocratic treatise The Art attempts to define the province of techne in the previously uncharted expanse between two extremes or limits--those of correctness and incorrectness...What is important to observe is that the boundaries of art are not fixed; they are strategic and subject to revision" (68-69).
"In sum, the aim of artistic inquiry and invention is neither to formalize a rigorous method not to secure and define an object of study but rather to reach an end by way of a path that can be retraced, modified, adapted, and 'shared.' The purpose of such a path, at least in ancient depictions of invention, is not to find a 'thing.' A techne deforms limits into new paths in order to reach--or better yet, to produce--an alternative destination" (69).
Chapter Three: Arts of Invention and Intervention
"The complex relationship of techne to limits is at the heart of its inventive power...techne defines itself in terms of intervention and invention...For this reason, techne is frequently defined against physis (nature), automaton (spontaneity), and tyche (chance), each of which both enables and constrains invention" (70-71).
--Techne/ology, Science, and Ancient Medicine
--Ancient Greek Science and Art
"What was understood to be pure science, or episteme, in Greece was highly deductive and, by definition, not the kind of knowledge to be applied to everyday life" (71).
"Just as the mechanics of weights and forces (for example, the pulley) enabled the 'smaller' to dominate the 'larger,' the sophistic arts of discourse could make the weaker argument appear to be the stronger. Such a view of technology...blurs the boundaries between humans and machines and between mechanical arts and arts of discourse" (72-73).
"The seemingly arcane concerns of ancient Greek science do not mean that epistemological boundaries were unimportant to these thinkers; they simply used different taxonomic principles for drawing them" (73).
--Techne, Theoria, and Representational Knowledge
"The writer notes that the peculiar excellence of the art [techne] of medicine resides in its ability to intervene in a condition in which the 'matter' is so indeterminate and the stakes are so great...Ironically, Aristotle preserved these ancient traditions of techne only by refusing to 'elevate' art to the status of philosophy, science, or ethics" (76).
Aristotle's epistemological taxonomy reveals "the extent to which epistemological boundaries are equivalent to social boundaries, and the sense of theoretical knowledge as spectacle (theoria) rather than representation" (77).
Aristotle's view of knowledge: "knowledge is defined by the class subject who seeks it; free science is the knowledge sought by the free man. This equation of epistemological and social boundaries is particularly important in understanding the ancient conception of theoretical knowledge" (78).
"Theoretical knowledge is more than nonutilitarian knowledge; it is knowledge as spectacle," (78) which John Burnet suggests "is one with the Greek spirit of inquiry."
"It is these traditions we must remember if at any point we are tempted to identify ancient Greek conceptions of theory with Enlightenment notions of representational knowledge. There are no visual metaphors that even remotely suggest theoria 're-presents' knowledge by 'reproducing' a conceptual framework that corresponds to a formal object or discrete practice. Theoria may be concerned with 'sight,'but it is sight as a perspectival 'gaze'--not an 'accurate' vision. Even classical depictions of mimesis offer little support for an interpretation of theoria as a mirror of practice of phenomena" (79).
--Empeiria and the Boundaries of Art
"empeiria most clearly distinguishes techne from ancient speculative traditions. 'Empeiria' is generally translated 'experience,' but it also refers to 'practice'--even 'craft'. Empeiria differentiates techne not only from philosophy but also from magic, chance, and the irrational. For Plato...it is mere knack as opposed to true knowledge. Other traditions, however, ground techne in empeiria, for it is empeiria that separates the knowledge of such arts as medicine, rhetoric, and seafaring from the deductive inquiry of philosphy" (79).
"It is for this reason that memory is an important component of art. The physician remembers, compares, and reevaluates methods tried in the past, adjusting principles on the basis of what seemed to succeed or fail. Aristotle insists that this capacity to recall, combine, and evaluate is the source of art and the critical difference between humankind and animals" (81).
"For both Aristotle and the Hippocratic writer, the experience of the practitioner is critical in an art; and it is memory, rather than postulates, that ties the principles of art to particular situations...These treatments of empeiria underscore the extent to which techne was a well-defined model of knowledge, distinct from philosophy, as early as the fifth century B.C.E. For the Hippocratic writers, as well as Aristotle, empeiria bore witness to the complexity of the principles that guide an art. Rational and repeatable without being rule governed, these principles lay somewhere between algorithms, or strictly deductive procedures, and natural genius--even magic" (82).
--The Interstices of Nature, Spontaneity, and Chance
--Making the Boundaries of Nature
"In Western traditions, the most persistent limit imposed on techne has been that of physis, or 'nature.' Various senses of 'nature' and 'the natural' have been used to authorize specific models of virtue, power, and distribution, and techne has frequently served as the dividing line, separating these models of 'nature' from human culture." (83).
Ontologically, nature has helped define techne as "deception" because it helps provide the lasting example of what is "true."
"In other words, if these are 'natural' human values, why are so many elaborate cultural mechanisms required for their inculcation? In a now familiar tautology, those who ascend the ladder of a liberal education have heard the call of human greatness; the call of human greatness beckons only those who already speak with its voice" (84).
"In many depictions, the boundary between nature and culture is the product of negotiation; thus nature's borders are simply a provisional stopping point in the negotiation" (84).
"In the simplest terms, what distinguishes nature for Aristotle is that it contains within itself its own source of motion (efficient cause), matter (material cause), form, and end (telos, or final cause)" (85).
Aristotle's "definition of physis is completely dependent of techne. Two principles undergird Aristotle's philosophy; first, inquiry must be guided by more than one 'cause,' or perspective, and second, these different perspectives are woven together in the notion of purpose, end, or telos...art exemplifies change for a purpose...The critical distinction between art and nature concerns their different efficient causes: nature is its own source of motion, whereas techne always requires a source of motion outside itself...in other words, an art does not contain within itself its form (formal cause) or source of motion (efficient cause)" (85).
"'Form' per se, is not what art imitates in this passage. Art imitates the action of nature; like nature, art is 'making for a purpose'" (86).
"Form is directly related to the action of making. Indeed, form precipitates motion toward an end. However, Aristotle will always ascribe movement to an efficient cause. Matter is set in motion toward a telos by efficient causes, and form directs that motion" (86).
"In artistic production--whether it be the production of health or belief--the artist is the efficient cause. Nature is unique in that it possesses within itself its own efficient cause...Thus, in Aristotle's teleological system, what distinguishes physis is that within it all four causes converge" (87).
- four causes (aitia): "material, efficient, formal, and final.
"in the telos of art is the product itself. The end of an art is invariably outside the artistic process. The end of an art is invariably outside the artistic process. As we shall see, the telos of the art of rhetoric is belief (pistis) in the audience...Doctoring must start from the art, not lead to it. Even Aristotle's art of tragedy does not have its telos in the drama itself but catharsis in the audience" (87).
Aristotle divides art and knowledge of art into two types. One is the knowledge of the form (the navigator who designs the ship) and the other is the knowledge of the material (the carpenter who shapes the wood to the navigator's specs).
"Despite his taxonomies, Aristotle's concept of physis remains difficult to define once and for all...But nature can also denote a kind of persistent 'character,' what he refers to as kata physin, or 'according to nature'...This sense of 'persistent character' brings physis into contexts that illustrate the often flexible boundary between Greek conceptions of nature and culture" (89).
This "persistent character" converges with ethos. "This is not a biological or 'natural' sense of character, even though, as West notes, by the fifth century B.C.E. ethos could refer to 'the innate disposition which will have its way.' For the most part, the 'nature,' or physis of a person is the result of a consistent 'pattern of behaviour,' which, in turn, is the product of cultural forces" (89).
- The nature of the rhetor is not biological but built on the pattern of behaviors which confer the author's nature as ethos. However, much of how the behaviors are perceived, interpreted, and generated are products of culture.
"The spontaneous frequently marks a limit of techne because it often refers to a phenomenon or a domain that does not yet admit human understanding or intervention...As research extends the domain of techne, it encroaches on the of spontaneity" (90).
"According to the writer, everything that occurs does so by some means and not by accident. This sense of means is not reducible to 'instrument' or instrumentality; rather it refers to an interpretable, predictable process" (92).
Explaining cures due to simply "getting well" spontaneously does little to explain what means alleviated the illness. "It is the work of techne to discover or invent those means. Thus, the job of the physician/researcher is twofold: to determine those means and to 'exploit' them--or to administer them more effectively by art" (92).
--Exploring the Indeterminacies of Chance
Tyche: act of god; act of a human being; agent of cause beyond human control; good fortune; necessity/fate.
"tyche was viewed as the operative cause in human life...while good birth might be attributed to physis, tyche explained the 'lot' of the peasant farmer. If tyche is identified with fate, then techne would be one of fate's most threatening adversaries--or humankind's most beneficial ally...Tyche refers to a point of indeterminacy that can be exploited by techne" (94).
"Because tyche refers to the indeterminacies that art may exploit, it is closely associated with temporal calculation and kairos" (95).
"This is one critical point that distinguishes techne from episteme: an art is temporal and strategic--characteristics that define the kind of 'conniving with reality' that makes both intervention and invention possible" (96).
"Spontaneity and chance are important in defining techne largely because of art's unique relationship to time. Spontaneity is a matter of determining if and when an art has intervened in a process, and chance is largely a matter of temporal predictability" (98).
"Again, 'time' distinguishes philosophy from art. The Greek sense of 'logos' as a 'reasoned account' applies to both episteme and techne. What is different about the two logoi, however, is their purpose, largely in relation to time. Greek philosophical traditions aimed at defining postulates that would 'hold' regardless of time and place. These 'accounts' remained in the domain of theoria as 'objects' of speculation. The accounts of techne, in contrast, served to enable an intervention,--or 'practice'--not to interpret it for its own sake...Neither the rhetorician nor the physician aimed to construct an account that simply 'explained' a phenomenon in either discourse or healing. The accounts of techne were provisional explanations of signs or precedents for the purpose of effective intervention...Similarly, the techne of rhetoric was concerned with the affairs of the polis, which included laws and public opinions, matters of war and matters of reason and emotion, constitutions of different states and common sayings of the young as well as the old. Though rhetoric was concerned with social behavior, emotions, and political formations, it was not the study 'of' them. Because a techne does not aim at interpretation per se, it does not have to transform the subjects with which it deals into static objects of study" (98().
--Techne and the Fuzzy Art of Invention
"This principle can be simply stated: that something cannot both be and not be...carefully and consistently maintains that techne lies outside the jurisdiction of its laws...fuzzy logic posits that everything is a matter of degree...This kind of binary logic, Kosko points out, cannot account for gradations between yes and not--the gray world of relative differences that seldom present themselves as binary alternatives...correspondence between theory and objective phenomenon is a rather poor criterion for a rational logic because it leads to a number of commonsense dilemmas with regard to time, change, and possibility. What happens to the truth of the statement 'Grass is green' in mid-December in the northern hemisphere?...Fuzzy logic responds to the exigencies of specific situations rather than forcing situations into a predetermined calculus...Thus, like techne, the value of fuzzy logic resides precisely in its capacity to work in time and with time to respond to shifting circumstances. Perhaps the most important similarity between techne and fuzzy logic is their relationship to probability...Like a poor, unkempt relative who is not expected to obey all the rules of fine etiquette, rhetoric is generally allowed to sit at philosophy's table--as long as it stays at the far end. This identification of rhetorical reasoning with philosophy has obscured the extent to which teche was a distinct model of knowledge, with its own boundaries, methods, and assumptions...Like fuzzy logic, techne is an alternative paradigm, not the adaptation of a paradigm already given...Both techne and fuzzy logic are found in the streets of interested calculation, where what is at issue is not representation but intervention and invention" (99-100).
Chapter Four: Prometheus and the Boundaries of Art
"Narratives...which describe humankind's appropriation of techne are known by several they are: frequently called 'prehistory' accounts and sometimes 'anthropological,' 'genetic,' 'huanistic' accounts of culture and art...the many accounts of the distribution of the arts shows themselves to be parables of social, economic, and political organization...for example, the technai both separate humankind from cave-dwelling beasts and provide the consitutive tools of civilization" (101-102).
"The didactic purposes of these myths become even more tangled for in some versions, what is at issue is specifically the distribution of dike (justice) and the art of politics" (102).
"The value of these accounts of techne resides in their potential to serve as cultural parables that describe something like the 'birth' of a set of distinctions--a point at which differences of 'kind' and portion are marked...In this chapter I explore the role of techne in authorizing specific modes of social, political, and economic order. As valuable 'know-how' that could be transformed into economic capital, such arts as metallurgy, medicine, navigation, and rhetoric were powerful catalysts in the redistribution of wealth and political power and in the construction of new modes of social identification and economic exchange" (103).
--Hesdiod's Prometheus Narrative
Both of Hesiod's Promethean narratives "describe Prometheus's attempts to shift the balance of power between humankind and the gods, and both attest to the role of techne in marking the boundaries of human identity" (103).
Prometheus--forethinker--"wit allows Prometheus" to seize advantage.
Arts (techne), though they are often depicted as trickery, are what humans have to counteract the power of gods and nature.
The fire (techne) that Prometheus brings to the humans represents a "transition from a nomadic gathering culture to one of cultivation and specialized labor" (104).
Techne mimics the creative powers of the gods and provides independence from the gods. Techne is linked then with power, and it disrupts normal power relationships and "creates a new one" (104).
Prometheus's second attempt to deceive Zeus (stealing fire) results in human toil and labor. As punishment for stealing the fire, Zeus creates Pandora for humans (women) "'in which they may all be glad of heart while they embrace their own destruction.' That 'plague' is woman, Pandora, the 'beautiful evil.' If Hesiod's description of Zeus's second punishment for Prometheus illustrates the misogyny of antiquity, it also illustrates the power of the art to disrupt nature's boundaries" (105).
Pandora's outer appearance conceals her deceptive heart, but this also exemplifies the indeterminate relationship between art and nature. "The artifice without is supposed to conceal what Hermes has placed with her heart, 'a deceitful nature,' together with 'lies and wheedling words.' To a large extent the myth turns on two indeterminate oppositions: 'true' nature set against art, and internality set against externality" (106).
"According to Hesiod, human guile will never conquer the force of the gods; art will never overcome fate. Prometheus's theft of art has provoked the adversarial relationship to nature that now defines human labor and production; his gift of fire, however, will also be humankind's most important means of mitigating that labor" (107).
--Techne and the Standardization of Value
8th century BCE Athens were ruled by Oikos (households) that brought together religious, social, and economic ties. "In a culture in which kinship provided the primary means of social indentification, the familial, religious, and economic were indistinguishable domains. From this perspective, the potential of techne to disrupt lines of power challenged existing orders at many levels...For Hesiod, both human identity and peace with the gods are contingent on labor, and techne threatens the redemptive function of work. Put another way, the techne of fire building may sustain human life, but one's rectification with the gods will come from work" (108).
"Because work performs an important redemptive function, it becomes the standard by which both the subject and the moral value are defined...Work, however, is a rather conservative standard of value; it will produce wealth but not facilitate its redistribution. Despite the significance of the exchange of techne in the Prometheus myths, the transfer of wealth, for Hesiod, is generally identified with force or deception" (108-109).
"Transferable arts that could create capital required a radical rethinking of class, value, and power. These new technai played a powerful role in displacing the aristocratic social order, which distributed privileges according to birth...The rise of specialization required systems of exchange that would accomodate different classes. In this context, the master of a techne could serve as 'symbolic capital' that could be transformed into economic capital; and like monetary capital, atechne could cross class lines. The arts of rhetoric, household management, and politics were, of course, express examples of technai that both redistributed social power and produced capital for thos sophists, say, who charged for their instruction" (110).
"The development of both technai and currency was a powerful catalyst for class mobility...George Thompson goes so far as to contend that the distinction between economic and noneconomic value is responsible, in part, for the birth of philosophy" (111).
"Though the specialization of the art of rhetoric as political expertise should have underscored the extent to which political power remained dependent on social and economic privilege, by the fourth century, techne was sometimes characterized as either an individual ability or a gift of nature...placing them outside the purview of economic calculation...As techne came to be seen less as a body of socially valuable knowledge and more as an individual ability, it no longer underscored the arbitrary nature of relations of power; instead of disrupting social boundaries, the concept of techne was often used to secure them" (111).
--Aeschylus's Prometheus Bound
"For our purposes, however, Prometheus's character is only part of the equation. As we shall see, though there is an obvious shift in the depiction of Prometheus from a cunning trickster to a tragic hero, one of the most important contrasts is between Hesiodic and Auschylean foresight, a contrast that marks the difference between foresight that enables intervention and foreknowledge that knows the future" (113).
Aeschylus''s Promethean tragedy recasts the narrative. "the tragedy begins with the ambiguous characterization of techne found throughout the play. Power and Force have outrun the power of art; and art...has been used to bind art 'beyond all loosening.' Put another way, Prometheus has been restrained in such a awy as to annul the power of 'inventing a way out' (113).
The Aeschylus narrative leaves Prometheus bound by Hephaestus and asking himself "And yet, what do I say? All that is to be I know full well and in advance, nor shall any affliction come upon me unforeseen. The word used in this context for 'knowing in advance' is formed from the verb epistamaie" (114)
Aeschylus's narrative relays a different kind of foresight. "Prometheus's ambiguous gift of foresight only gives him knowledge of his 'portion,' not the power to change it" (114). Whereas Hesiod's Theogeny presents Prometheus as a person who can overcome his fate through craft, Aeschylus's narrative presents Prometheus as chained and powerless to use craft against fate.
"This sense of foresight in Hesiod's narratives is a critical dimension of techne. Here, foresight is not knowledge of a future that cannot be changed, neigher is it a static representation of 'fate' that holds by necessity. Instead, Hesiodic foresight is that complex, temporal dimension of art, identified with kairos, that allows for an intervention that disturns the present and creates the future" (119).
Chapter Five: Plato and the Boundaries of Art
The anonymous author of the Dissoi Logoi, "The writer maintains that 'understanding' is perfectly congruent with engaging in the affairs of the polis, knowledge and public intervention are not incompatible. With the topos of what belongs to a man and an art, the writer attempts to fuse the two lives that Socrates, in the Gorgias, so contemptuously divides: 'the life spent in philosophy' and the life spent 'speaking in the Assembly and practicing rhetoric and playing the politician" (121).
"For Plato, the private life and the life of the politics could hardly be less compatible...Plato's state would be governed by a guardian class, who would rule by crafting and maintaining a social order based on their philosophical principles. Only in this way could the philosophical life coexist with the life of the statesmen" (121).
"In contrast, both Protagoras and Isocrates assume that the lives of the philosopher and the public citizen can--even should--belong to the same man; indeed, it is unlikely that Protagoras would have made the sophist's distinction between knowledge and civic action in the first place...This chapter focuses on two specific areas of incommensurability between these two traditions: their conflicting definitions of rhetorike, logon techne, paideia, philosophia, doxa, and episteme, and that these conflicts have left us with not only an attenuated conception of the art of discourse but also a model of subjectivity, defined by internal order rather than civic action" (122).
--Philosophers versus Rhetors
--Philosophers and the Polis
Plato disliked the public life in Athens (mid-fifth to fourth century) because of their insistence on the principle of isegoria--"the right of all citizens to speak on matters of state importance" (122).
The use of lottery also angered Plato; Aristotle was not a fan either. "It is difficult to imagine a system more antithetical to Plato's principles of government than selection by lot "(123).
"For Plato and Aristotle, affecting the business of the state took the form of advising its leaders, rather than directly intervening in its affairs...Their 'ideal' states were conceived to be constructed in reality. At the same time, neither Plato nor Aristotle saw himself changing the state by engaging its conflicts and submitting to its procedures. Instead, they designed, from the outside, the principles of order that would govern the state within" (124).
--Plato's Rhetorike
Plato effectively separated logos from techne, redefining knowledge in terms of subject matter and making techne equivalent to social function. For Protagoras and Isocrates, logon techne provides the means to secure, disrupt, and create social and political order...rhetoric did not exist as a discipline until Plato coined the term 'rhetorike'" (126-27).
"logon techne referred to a recognized tradition that preceded Plato's coining of rhetorike...logon techne was a more inclusive study than Plato's rhetorike...rhetorike was a philosophical invention imposed by Plato on existing arts of discourse" (127).
"Paideia is not a strictly disciplinary model of knowledge; it is closely associated with imitation and the inculcation of habits and values...does not refer so much to knowledge that one 'has' as it does to knowledge that on 'is.' ...paideia is evaluated primarily by its ability to engender a certain kind of social behavior, not to demarcate or represent either knowledge or truth...paideia is culture as knowledge" (128).
"Once Plato succeeds in forcing the definition of logon techne in terms of subject matter, rhetoric becomes definition of logon techne in terms of subject matter, rhetoric becomes an art with no meaningful, legitimate domain, and logon techne becomes 'teaching' with no valid ethical or epistemological standards" (129).
--Paideia, Logon Techne, and Philosophia
This section begins by discussing Plato's dialogue Protagoras. Plato interrogates Hippocrates to better understand why he wants to study with Protagoras. In the dialog, Hippocrates is unable to explain what he hopes to gain from Protagoras. In the end, Socrates concludes that the philosopher is the only person that qualifies as the right person to be the "physician
of the soul" (129-130).
"These brief excerpts invoke the terms and distinctions that underwrite Plato's paradigm of knowledge. True knowledge is contingent on the class status of the 'knower.' Paideia is instruction appropriate for the freeman, whose social role does not depend on a livelihood or profession" (130).
"For Plato, expertise is equivalent to function; and function determines one's place in the hierarchical order of the state...in the Protagoras, the philosopher is depicted as the 'expert' in discerning good and bad; and that expertise defines the highest function in the state, to which all other specializations are subordinate...Thus, philosophy is a profession in that it requires expertise; philosophy is not a profession in that it is not practiced for earthly gain" (130).
Isocrates describes his teaching as he ton logon paideia="the teaching of eloquence" or "the art of discourse" (130). Isocrates defends what he does against sophistry, calling what the sophists do nonsense. He, however, believes that what he does is akin to mental gymnastics that makes the student more intelligent (131).
The end goal of Isocrates' instruction ("philosophia"), is to create "'men' who can 'excel in oratory or in managing affairs or in any line of work.' The student who submits to this training will 'embody' the practices, 'discourses' and values of his teacher; the only true test of that embodiment is the student's success in managing his own household and intervening in the affairs of the polis" (131).
Both Isocrates and Plato have a paideia that seeks to establish a subject. Plato's is through methodology (dialectic). Isocrates is through exercise and practice.
"While maintaining that these subjects [Socrates-style dialectic] 'do not injure' and may be worthy of praise, Isocrates observes that 'most men see in such studies nothing but empty talk and hairsplitting; for none of these disciplines has any useful application either to private or public affairs'" (133).
"Callicles' perspective is virtually identical to that of Isocrates: both view dialectic as early training that prepares the student for participating in the more important affairs of the polis" (133).
--Doxa and Episteme
Doxa- usually translated as "opinion"--"knowledge concerned with human affairs and behavior" (133).
Episteme-- scientific knowledge
"The contents of an episteme often rises above the contingencies of time and place. Thus, while doxa is contingent, mutable, and common, an episteme is transcendent, static, and specialized" (134).
Plato sees doxa as opposed to truth and science. He believes it is identified with "appearances and deception" (134).
"This truth is the substance of an episteme and the product of philosophical inquiry...It is the nature of opinion to change and the nature of truth to remain the same; and only truth can be the subject of a 'true' art. Thus, Socrates bluntly concludes, 'The art of speech [logon technen] displayed bu one who has gone chasing after beliefs, instead of knowing the truth, will be a comical sort of art, in fact no art at all.'...Platonic knowledge is a process of recollection...Socrates explains that 'we must always be born knowing and continue to know all through our lives, because 'to know' means simply to retain the knowledge which one has acquired and not to lose it...Mathematics and geometry serve as models of order throughout Plato's descriptions of knowledge, virtue, and the ideal state" (134-135).
Plato's types of knowledge undergird his belief that philosophers should be the guardians and leaders of the state.
For Plato, knowledge is static and unchanging and only a few are capable of understanding true knowledge, which means they should run the state.
For Isocrates, knowledge can shift and change based on whether or not a person is "convinced of the justice of a cause" (137). He declares that his teaching imbues more temperance and justice than the philosophers (Socrates/Plato).
Protagoras writes that man is the measure of all things, but "Protagoras's homo mensura doctrine is a singular example of a normative measure that resists decontextualized norms. Anthropos as measure is neither 'man' in general nor archetypal, ideal man but rather anthropos (in the singular), situated in specific acts of perception" (138).
"Protagoras's theory of knowledge is his theory of value; epistemology collapses into axiology. There are no decontextualized standards for evaluating either knowledge or value; what we knoe is what we find 'worth knowing'...Like Protagoras, Isocrates exchanges the absolue 'good' for relative improvement" (139).
"Protagoras's theory of knowledge and value is relativistic without giving way to either skipticism or solipsism...For Protagoras the value and stability of 'objects' of perception are 'imposed'; however, they are not imposed in just any way. In other words, relativity is not identical to radical arbitrariness. To say that perception is an act embedded in a matrix of contingencies involving both the world and the perceiver is not to say either that the world is unknowable or that perception is only the experience of a private self. It is to say that perceptions are situated acts of judgment, open to question and challenge...Moreover, while measures of value may never be fully explicit, they are not so tacit that they cannot be revised. Protagoras's conception of wisdom and persuasion is based on the possibility of that revision...It is this power to institute alternative calculations of value that is at the heart of the sophists' logon techne as an art of making the weaker argument appear the stronger" (140).
Aristotle disagrees with Plato about doxa. He uses the enthymeme to establish doxa as a part of practical wisdom. "For Aristotle, the rhetor's world of doxa is not antithetical to the philospher's world of certain knowledge. It is Plato who insists on the strict separation of the two" (141).
--Knowledge and Art in Plato's State
"Techne is at the center of Plato's notions of social, political, and epistemological order, where it provides the principles that both separate other forms of knowledge from philosophy and subordinate other classes to the rule of philosopher...One's function is identical to one's art, and virtue in the Platonic social order cosists of fulfillinf one's function" (141).
"Plato's conceptions of justice and order [equality within classes, not between them] are at the heart of his frequent warnings to the sophists not to overstep boundaries" (142).
"Plato suggests that a techne is an innate function, independent of experience...With art thus reduced to function and knowledge restricted to recollection, no meaningful place is left for invention...In Plato's state, function provides both social order and the ties of human community" (143).
"Thereforem the function of the philosophers is to be, literally, the crafters...of the state, defining (or inventing) both function and happiness for its various parts" (144).
"Plato's predilection for resolving the problems of the polis in the mind of the philosophers point to two important characteristics of his canception of art, politics, and social order. First, social order and ties of community are primarily defined as vertical hierarchies of function...Moreover...the internal state of justice is defined in reference to the self rather that to the community" (146).
"Second...it would seem unlikely that all citizens...would be equally free to attend to the matters of the soul that this internal harmony requires...While the 'whole' of the state should exist in each of its parts, those parts can still differ in kind--and certainly in important" (147).
--Protagoras's Promethean Narrative
In Plato's Protagoras, Socrates interrogates Protagoras as to what a student will gain by studying with him. In response, Protagoras gives a definition for logon techne: "'The proper care of his personal affairs, so that he may best manage his own household, and also of the state's affairs, so as to become a real power in the city, both as a speaker and a man of action.' Socrates asks in response if Protagoras is referring to 'the art of politics'..., and promising to make man good citizens. Protagoras responds in the affirmative" (150).
Socrates disagrees that statemanship can be taught.
Protagoras uses the Promethean narrative to argue that "Athenians do not call experts in matters of political wisdom because they also believe that 'everyone must share in this kind of virtue; otherwise the state could not exist'" (152).
"Protagoras's logon techne...is inextricably tied to the affairs of the polis. It is not only an art that allows one to change one's share, or moira; it is an art in which all citizens must have a share. Second...Protagorean virtue is constitutive of social and political ties, not an internal state of justice...Third, though Protagoras does not mark out a self-contained subject, his paideia has far more to do with the construction of a subject than with the delineation of subject matter, an art, or knowledge per se" (154).
--Marking the Boundaries of Fate
"What is at stake, as Socrates makes clear, is finally to discover the type of teacher who could give one 'the ability and the knowledge to distinguish the life that is good from that which is bad, and always and everywhere to choose the best that the conditions allow'...For the most part, however, the narrative [Er] transforms choice into both a standard of judgment and unit of measure: shoosing the worse life will make the soul more unjust; choosing the better life will make it more just. The problem is that to choose one's own condition is not only to mitigate fate and necessity but also virtually to deny their existence...Thus, Plato's association of virtue with moira is not exceptional; his introduction of choice is. Such a depiction of individual choice would have seemed ludicrous in many predemocratic traditions, where the single uncontestable fact of life was that one begins with an alloted portion that may or may not differ significantly from those apportioned to others" (156-157).
"The absence of techne in the Myth of Er illustrates the distance between Plato's conception of virtue and traditions of techne--such as that of Protagoras--according to which techne is a means of challenging, mitigating, and even changing, one's fate" (161).
Chapter Six: Aristotle and the Boundaries of the Good Life
Aristotle developed three domains of knowledge: theoretical (philosophy); Practical (ethics/politics); and Productive (medicine, architecture) and as Atwill argues in this chapter, techne.
"Many of the ancient connotations associated with techne are reinscribed in Aristotle's domain of productive knowledge" (163).
"To argue that rhetoric is a productive art, outside Aristotle's domains of theoretical and practical knowledge, is to challenge a number of assumptions and interpretive traditions...But defining rhetoric's relationship to practical knowledge presents another set of problems. Do we really want to argue that rhetoric is distinct from ethics? Do we want to teach a rhetoric that does not aim at the good life? I hope to show that there is good reason for rescuing rhetoric from Aristotle's domain of practical knowledge as well" (163).
"while it may seem strange to praise rhetoric for failing either to consist of the highest knowledge or to be driven by the end of the 'good life,' Aristotle's greatest contribution to rhetoric may have been his willingness to allow it these two failures" (164).
--Theoretical, Practical, and Productive Knowledge
"Thus, while productive knowledge and practical knowledge share the characteristic of being concerned things that do not contain their own 'efficient cause,' both types of knowledge still retain their distinctive capacities--or forms of intellection...What Burnet's discussion demonstrates is the tendency throughout modern Aristotelian scholarship to make the theory/practice distinction override the theoretical/practical/productive triad" (165).
Aristotle borrows his three forms of knowledge from Pythogoras, who determined there were three types of men: those who love wisdom, those who love honor, and those who love pleasure.
"It is important to acknowledge at the outset that the three cotegories are not airtight. Aristotle is not always consistent in using episteme to refer only to theoretical knowledge or techne to refer only to productive knowledge" (168).
"Aristotle is very precise in distinguishing theoretical knowledge from any knowledge concerned with action or production--even from any knowledge that is not about the 'best'" (169).
"The most significant distinguishing characteristic of theoretical knowledge is that it is pursued for no practical end...Theoretical knowledge is a 'free science' that 'alone exists for itself.'...Aristotle's philosopher bears a strong resemblance to Plato's ideal ruler: his life of contemplation is secured by social boundaries that make his episteme 'free.'" (170).
Theoretical knowledge is teleological. "In sum, theoretical knowledge is concerned with ends, without being directed toward any utilitarian end; though change is part of its study, it is itself immutable" (170).
"Practical knowledge, in contrast, is concerned with action and--what is far less than perfect--human behavior...In other words, practical knowledge, or wisdom, is 'a reasoned and true state of capacity to act with regard to human goods'...Practical knowledge has one well-defined telos--eudaimonia [the good life/happiness]" (171).
"Productive knowledge contrasts with the contemplation associated with theoretical knowledge and the action associated with practical knowledge. Productive knowledge is defined by three characteristics: its concern with the contingent, its implication in social and economic exchange, and its resistance to determinate ends" (172).
Aristotle defines art:
"Art [techne] is identical with a state of capacity to make, involving a true course of reasoning. All art is concerned with coming into being, i.e. with contriving and considering how something may come into being which is capable of either being or not being, and whose origin is in the maker and not in the thing made; for art is concerned neither with things that are, or come into being, by necessity, not with things that do so in accordance with nature" (173).
"Because art is concerned with the contingent, it can never claim, as does theoretical knowledge, to transcend time. Indeed, the ability to seize the appropriate moment, to exploit time rather than transcend it, is one of the defining features of techne...Aristotle's concept of art is at the heart of his teleological perspective" (173).
"Aristotle reinscribes Plato's functionalism in a teleological system in which each function is part of a higher purpose...But herein resides one critical problem of the teleological perspective: What principle outside the system allows one to evaluate means and ends?...The user is so privileged in Aristotle's system that he insists the user is the most appropriate judge of an artistic product" (174).
"Because productive knowledge has no 'ends in itself,' it can never be 'self-moved,' which is particularly important in Aristotle's teleological system...Art, however, requires both an external mover and material at hand...productive knowledge is defined by an act of exchnage (174-175).
"Aristotle directly applies the criteria of productive knowledge to the art of rhetoric. For example, one of the art's defining features is its concern solely with things that can be 'otherwise' [contain separate possibilities]....rhetorical knowledge is always subject to the contingencies of context, time, and history. Because rhetoric must conform to the key criterion of productive knowledge...Aristotle's description of the art has overtones of sophistic rhetoric...Aristotle makes it very clear, however, that rhetoric's place in the epistemological taxonomy is not determined by the truth or falsity of its subject matter but rather its indeterminacy with regard to knowledge and value" (175).
"The relationship of rhetoric to productive knowledge is particularly explicit in relation to social exchange...Because the first principles and ends of productive knowledge are always situated in some form of social exchange, art can never be concerned with determinate knowledge or value...Much like Protagoras's theory of value, productive knowledge has no external arbiter, no final judge, but only 'makers' and 'users' who change with every exercise of an art" (176).
--Eudaimonia and Subjectivity as Private Property
"Plato's functionalism is comparable to Aristotle's teleoology. In Aristotle's case, however, eudaimonia displaces the technai as the basis of the state's order...In other words, the arete [excellence] of an element of Aristotle's state resides in its adaptation to hierarchized function...Referring to the 'elements' of the state, Aristotle observes that 'every instrument is best made when intended for one and not for many uses'" (177).
"A man can attain eudaimonia only when he has been 'sufficiently equipped' with 'the necessaries of life.' Here Aristotle blurs the boundary between theoretical and practical knowledge by describing the activity of eudaimonia as identical to the theoretical life of speculation" (180-181).
Aristotle's belief that the telos of the state is to provide the "good life" does not mean that all memebers of the society can or should be happy members of the polis. "Instead, he will change the boundaries of the state so that those without excellence will not contaminate the eudaimonia of the best'" (183).
"Aristotle's description of private property suggests that there is an interdependent, if not mutually constitutive, relationship between the love of self and the love of property...Private property is the means of both self-expression and self-knowledge; knowledge of the self would be impossible without the procurement of private property" (185).
"Thus, productive knowledge poses a stumbling block for those who attempt to invoke Aristotle to authorize either a philosophical or an 'ethical rhetoric [theoretical knowledge and practical knowledge]. Rather than embodying culture's highest value, the subjects of productive knowledge are better characterized as the very nexus of competing standards of value; rather than securing boundaries of either knowledge or subjectivity, productive knowledge is more likely to be implicated in their transgression and renegotiation" (185).
--Techne and Philosphy according to Isocrates and Aristotle
"Because philosophy could be sought only when 'almost all the necessities of life and the things that make for comfort and recreation were present', techne is a part both cultural and economic evolution. These orders of knowledge continue to reflect a social order--a hierarchy of the 'mind' that places the 'man' who is occupied with philosophy at the highest level...In sum, arguments that Aristotle elevates rhetoric to the status of philosophy and ethics must be based on a very selective reading of Rhetoric...It is apparent that Isocrates and Aristotle had vastly different conceptions of philosophy. It also seems fairly obvious that Aristotle won the definitional contest for philosophy...The critical value of Aristotle's taxonomy is that it did leave room for art; to a large extent it preserved the sophistic traidtion by placing rhetoric in the domain of techne rather than in that of philosophy. What is lost in the taxonomy, however, is the sense of the art of rhetoric as a valued mode of intervention into existing conditions and a means for the invention of new possibilities" (189).
Chapter Seven: Aristotle's Rhetoric and the Theory/Practice Binary
This chapter opens with Hesiod's Gaia myth, which Atwill believes exemplifies the variations of techne she has argued for: act of intervention; deploys cunning intelligence--which is the only weapon against force and brute strength; it's a plan and a trick; crafty and requires foresight; seizes the opportune moment; it is exchanged; produces alternative relations of power.
In the 19th and 20th centuries, rhetoric "becomes in Cope's hands a managerial art, ready for service in an emerging industrial culture...it is a hermeneutic rather than a heuristic art" (192).
"The modern history of rhetoric has virtually been determined by the theory/practice binary" (192).
"In rhetoric's disciplinary history, theory is often characterized as mirroring rhetorical practice. To represent rhetoric by invariable rules, however, rhetorical practice must be depicted as a virtually immutable behavior, more like a natural process than a social activity. In other words, rhetorical practice must have a basis other than culture" (193).
Atwill disagrees that rhetorical theory can transcend time and context. "In contrast to theoretical knowledge, productive knowledge is decisively instrument and uncompromisingly situated. Instead of rising above the contingencies of time and circumstance, productive knowledge is consumately dependent on them" (195).
"Aristotle maintains that the end of rhetoric is outside itself--in the 'hearer'...productive knowledge: its concern with that which can be otherwise...productive knowledge: its implication in an exchange, the value of which is both social and economic; its resistance to determinant epistemological and axiological ends; and its consummate dependence on time and circumstance...the theory/practice binary transforms rhetoric from a situated social exchange into a static object--or stable activity--grounded in nature" (195).
--Edward M. Cope and Rhetoric as Practical Knowledge
She's mapping over her view of theoretical, practical, and productive models over 19th century composition pedagogies.
Copes writings about techne and rhetoric in mid 19th century England "finally reconstructs rhetoric as a science of human behavior--or what we might call a subdiscipline of 'political science'" (196).
"Similarly, rhetoric's usefulness as a discipline, according to Cope, resides in its potential to predict and control natural behavior. Cope refers to Rhetoric...to make connections between human behavior, the laws of nature...and rhetoric. This passage defines the field of study as 'the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion.' According to Cope's interpretation, 'the available means of persuasion' are the constraints embedded in empeira that govern rhetorical performance" (200).
"Cope is not interested in rhetoric as a situated, social exchange. His purpose is to define principles that explain rhetoric as a form of human behavior constrained by laws of nature" (201).
--William Grimaldi and Rhetoric as Theoretical Knowledge
"Grimaldi's objective is to bring both ethics and philosophy under the aegis of rhetoric, a goal he seeks to accomplish through formalist interpretations of elements of Aristotelian rhetoric" (202).
"Those formal structures (primarily the enthymeme, but also the three proofs of ethos, logos, and pathos) are stable and valid because they reflect natural forms of intellectual and moral reasoning. Thus, like Cope, Grimaldi uses 'nature' to validate his interpretation of rhetoric. Unlike Cope, however, Grimaldi does not seriously confront rhetoric's relationship to Aristotle's productive knowledge" (202).
"Grimaldi concludes that by virtue of its universality, enthymemic form is capable of representing not only reality, but also truth and justice. More specifically, the enthymeme functions heuristically to determine the most effective proofs and philosophically and ethically to determine the 'best' proofs" (205).
Chapter Eight: Arts of Virtue and Democracy
--Arts of Intervention versus Sciences of Representation
"The significance of containing rhetoric within the theory/practice binary resides in its transformation of an art of intervention into a discipline of representations. From this perspective, rhetoric is far more prone to reproduce the given than to invent new possibilities...One of the most powerful normalizing strategies is that of description" (207).
"Description not only creates the world but also who we are engaging that world" (208).
"Description may even be more powerful than prescription in eliciting compliance to limits of behavior and desire, particularly when the source of those descriptions is accorded a high degree of cultural authority...Put more simply, in many cases it is far easier to challenge a prescriptive order or law than an accepted account of 'reality.'" (208).
"'only in imaginary experience...which neutralizes the sense of social realities, does the social world take the form of a universe of possibles equally possible for any possible subject.' In other words for most agents the world seldom presents itself as a smorgasbord of options, limited only by ignorance or indolence. Agents are more likely, as Bordieu suggests, to 'cut their coats according to their cloth,' or put another way, to 'shape the aspirations according to concrete indices of the accessible and the inaccessible'" (208-209).
"So what are we to make of liberal arts traditions that hold to normative conceptions of 'virtue'--which, in the end, are inextricably tied to historically...specific conceptions of subjectivity?...They provide the basis for rationalizing the unequal distribution of 'virtue,' together with its social and economic rewards...From this perspective, the often virulent responses to changes in the canons and demographics of the academy are not overreactions. Canon changes are not minor adjustments; neither is the admission of diverse constituencies in the academy simply a matter of opening the doors a little wider. These changes have brought to light the contingent character of the values, norms, and ideals on which the humanities were founded...But to question the normative values of an institution is not to question the importance of norms or values per se. In the same way, to understand that knowledge is historically contingent is not to say that meaningful knowledge is impossible" (209).
"Part of my purpose in outlining the tradition of techne has been to use it heuristically to suggest alternative models of knowledge and value" (209).
"To refigure rhetorical studies as an art of intervention and invention is to create a very different classroom...What forums are available and what must be invented to enable the kind of political agency that was once the primary aim of rhetorical instruction? In this context, what is at stake for teachers is less the transmission of specific material than the renegotiation of students' own symbolic capital...Enabling students to 'seize the advantage' in specific rhetorical contexts amounts to inviting them to be a part of constructing standards of value and advantage in their cultures" (210).
--Inventing Arts of Respect and Justice
"Unfortunately, we live in a world bound by many bad-faith contracts--laws, policies, and institutions based on negotiated settlements that protect all sides from having to form relationships...If we have to see the same reality before we can begin to talk, we will live in a world with very little dialogue. Difference can no longer be the anomaly, the enemy, or the problem to be solved. Difference is the condition" (212).
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