CCR 711: Aristotle and Techne

Aristotle and TechneCCR 711 ::: 9/17/13

Wednesday, October 2, 13

How is this breakdown of intellectual virtues connected to techne? Since techne is a virtue, is it separate from the other 5? How is techne ultimately connected to ethics?

The definition of art preceded these topics in Book VI, yet I fail to see how art connect to the soul and to knowledge. As I noted earlier, the Aristotle claims that art is conjoined with true reason.


First things first:What is rhetoric?


Why is it useful?The Rhetoric, 1355a


Is it universal?


Is it a discrete art?(Ch 2)


What are its modes and means?


When is persuasion successful?


What is the duty of rhetoric?

1357a


OK, now:The Nicomachean

Ethics


What is phronesis?


Now all Art has to do with production, and contrivance, and seeing how any of those things may be produced which may either be or not be, and the origination of which rests with the maker and not with the thing made.And, so neither things which exist or come into being necessarily, nor things in the way of nature, come under the province of Art, because these are self-originating. And since Making and Doing are distinct, Art must be concerned with the former and not the latter. And in a certain sense Art and Fortune are concerned with the same things, as, Agathon says by the way, "Art Fortune loves, and is of her beloved."So Art, as has been stated, is "a certain state of mind, apt to Make, conjoined with true Reason;" its absence, on the contrary, is the same state conjoined with false Reason, and both are employed upon Contingent matter.


Practical Wisdom cannot be Knowledge nor Art; nor the former, because what falls under the province of Doing must be Contingent; not the latter, because Doing and Making are different in kind.It remains then that it must be "a state of mind true, conjoined with Reason, and apt to Do, having for its object those things which are good or bad for Man:" because of Making something beyond itself is always the object, but cannot be of Doing because the very well-doing is in itself an End.


Then again Art admits of degrees of excellence, but Practical Wisdom does not: and in Art he who goes wrong purposely is preferable to him who does so unwittingly, but not so in respect of Practical Wisdom or the other Virtues. It plainly is then an Excellence of a certain kind, and not an Art.


Jason:

He begins part IV by making a distinction when it comes to knowledge by discussing how matter can either be the object of making or the object of doing. And, he explicitly separates making and doing. He then reasons that

Now as Architecture is an Art, and is the same as “a certain state of mind, conjoined with Reason, which is apt to Make,” and as there is no Art which is not such a state, nor any such state which is not an Art, Art, in its strict and proper sense, must be “a state of mind, conjoined with true Reason, apt to Make.”

So, techne is a state of mind focused on making. This seems to suggest that the moral virtue of techne resides in the finished product rather than the process.


Lindsey:Art has its origin in a maker and is conjoined with true reason. The maker has a soul and that soul is both intellectual and moral which allows the maker to act/think both rationally and irrationally. The maker who chooses to act rationally and morally thus taps into his senses, intellect, appetition, and thus uses reason in able to know and in able to calculate. Thus the maker seeks for knowledge through things valued, which are necessary truths, and types of action and thought, which are contingent. It is in the space of contingency that the maker is apt to calculate and apt to make art. And it is this process that the maker goes through that identifies the art as conjoined with true reason.


CCR 711: Aristotle and Techne

Spiritual

Transcript of CCR 711: Aristotle and Techne