Customer Reviews

Of Art and Wisdom: Plato's Understanding of Techne

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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.

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!

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.