The document discusses Aristotle's view of techne (art/craft) and its connection to virtues. It notes that techne is a virtue focused on making or production, separate from other intellectual virtues. It questions how techne connects to knowledge, the soul, and ethics. The document examines passages from Aristotle discussing how techne is a state of mind conjoined with true reason, focused on contingent matters involving making rather than necessary matters or doing. It suggests techne's moral virtue resides in the finished product rather than the process of making.

1. Aristotle and Techne
CCR 711 ::: 9/17/13
Wednesday, October 2, 13

2. 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.
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3. First things first:
What is rhetoric?
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4. Why is it useful?
The Rhetoric, 1355a
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5. Is it universal?
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6. Is it a discrete art?
(Ch 2)
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7. What are its modes
and means?
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8. When is persuasion
successful?
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9. What is the duty of
rhetoric?
1357a
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10. OK, now:
The Nicomachean
Ethics
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11. What is phronesis?
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12. 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.
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13. 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.
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14. 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.
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15. 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.
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16. 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.
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