This work analyzes Plato's treatment of the word "techne". It shows that Plato's understanding of both the goodness of techne, as well as its limitations and its need to be supplemented by non-technical wisdom, can speak directly about the impact technology has had on contemporary life.
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Review
Roochnik has written the most thorough book yet about the techne analogy as the model for knowledge in Greek thinking. He forces a reconfiguration and rethinking of the entire debate about the place of the techne analogy in Plato's thought. This is an important, provocative book. --Drew Hyland, Trinity College
Many scholars have long suspected that Plato never sought a techne of virtue, but no one prior to Roochnik has done the hard work necessary to overcome the weight of orthodox opinion on this matter. Roochnik shows that we who live in an age enamored of things technical have much to learn from the ancient Greeks about techne itself. His important book provides us with a timely occasion to rethink what we know and the ways in which we know it. --Jacob A. Howland, University of Tulsa --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Many scholars have long suspected that Plato never sought a techne of virtue, but no one prior to Roochnik has done the hard work necessary to overcome the weight of orthodox opinion on this matter. Roochnik shows that we who live in an age enamored of things technical have much to learn from the ancient Greeks about techne itself. His important book provides us with a timely occasion to rethink what we know and the ways in which we know it. --Jacob A. Howland, University of Tulsa --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
About the Author
David Roochnik is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Boston University. He is the author of The Tragedy of Reason: Toward a Platonic Conception of Logos (Routledge, 1991).
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Re-Discovering Plato, Techne and Aporia,
By
This review is from: Of Art and Wisdom: Plato's Understanding of Techne (Paperback)
David Roochnik, a former student of Stanley Rosen, provides a clear and persuasive analysis of the use and meaning of techne in Plato. As well, he devotes a chapter to the pre-Platonic inception and transformation of the term. His thesis, even 7 years later, is quite radical as it challenges much of the predominant and conventional ways of understanding Plato as a philosopher seeking a science of moral knowledge. He engages with such promiment scholars as Marthat Nussbaum and T. Irwin. Roochnik's book is a significant contribution to the recent attempt to re-appreciate a philosopher so often seen to be a footnote to modern thinking. Finally, anyone interested in the question of technology will find this study worthwhile and very illuminating of the difference between its ancient form and the current understanding.
6 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Platonic hubris,
By
This review is from: Of Art and Wisdom: Plato's Understanding of Techne (Paperback)
If Roochnik's thesis is correct, great injustice has been done to Plato. You would think, after 2,500 years we would have this right, but, unfortunately Roochnik thinks we are teaching Plato all wrong. Roochnik does battle with a thing he calls the SAT (standard application of techne) which is a scholarly consensus that Plato had an art (techne) of virtue and it was teachable. The problem with this thesis is, as Dr. Roochnik points out, that it makes Plato a Sophist and not a philosopher. This is a welcome exercise in philosophical and interpretive hubris. It has a quality that Kierkegaard called angst, a sympathetic antipathy. One can imagine scholars attracted to the book for it's lively and fascinating discussion of pre-socratic techne, at the same time, put off by the thesis that everyday the world over paid professional academics are misrepresenting the thought of one of the foundational figures of western culture. Can you not imagine such a one holding his nose as he footnotes a reference? It is to laugh!
4 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
clear but shallow,
By A Customer
This review is from: Of Art and Wisdom: Plato's Understanding of Techne (Hardcover)
Roochnik's 20 years of study has revealed a clear but shallow book on Plato; he forges his "techne" glasses on everything he touches leaving the reader with no clear understanding of what Socratic wisdom consists of. His Plato becomes boring and uninsightful. Readers should skip this book and go directly to Strauss or Bloom for a clear and meaningful understanding of PLatonic wisdom.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
Inside This Book
(learn more)
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Browse and search another edition of this book.
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs):
(learn more)
kingly techne, typical techne, measuring techne, techne whose subject matter, techne question, techne analogy, typical technai, stochastic techne, intelligent endurance, protreptic argument, political techne, nontechnical knowledge, determinate subject matter, other technai, other techne, rhetorical techne, determinate field, armor fighting, neutral items, epistemic content, early dialogues, middle dialogues Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Against the Sophists, List of Criteria, Idea of the Good, Nicomachean Ethics, Loeb Classical Library, Sextus Empiricus, New York, Hippias Minor, Aristotle's Metaphysics, Alexander of Aphrodisias, Harvard University Press, Artium Scriptores, Moral Knowledge Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
kingly techne, typical techne, measuring techne, techne whose subject matter, techne question, techne analogy, typical technai, stochastic techne, intelligent endurance, protreptic argument, political techne, nontechnical knowledge, determinate subject matter, other technai, other techne, rhetorical techne, determinate field, armor fighting, neutral items, epistemic content, early dialogues, middle dialogues Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Against the Sophists, List of Criteria, Idea of the Good, Nicomachean Ethics, Loeb Classical Library, Sextus Empiricus, New York, Hippias Minor, Aristotle's Metaphysics, Alexander of Aphrodisias, Harvard University Press, Artium Scriptores, Moral Knowledge Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product).
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
