The Cave and the Light: Plato Versus Aristotle, and the Struggle for the Soul of Western Civilization

by Arthur Herman

This is why Aristotle was prepared to take a second look at the mechanical, practical arts of his day, or what we call technology. All forms of knowledge, he declares in his usual categorical way, are either theoretical, technical, or practical. Pure theory (epistēmē) is concerned only with knowing and understanding, like biology, metaphysics (or “first philosophy”), and theology. Practical knowledge, praxis, has to do with doing. Interestingly, he puts politics and ethics in that category. But technē, the third kind of knowledge, has to do with making. Its goal is not understanding but production. The potter at his wheel, the blacksmith at his forge, the shipwright in a Piraeus boatyard, are not interested in discovering some new scientific principle or adding to the sum of human knowledge. The art of making, Aristotle declares, only imitates nature rather than inventing something new. But in Aristotle’s system, this too makes technē a valid, even dignified, form of action, because it involves the systematic use of knowledge in order to advance human action—one could even say to advance human purpose.