Techne — Greek term (τέχνη) designating productive know-how: the technical, artistic, or artisanal skill oriented toward the production (poiēsis) of something external to the agent. It covers both the manual crafts (carpentry, medicine, shipbuilding) and the arts, and its emblematic figure is the craftsman (dēmiourgós) who masters teachable rules. Aristotle (Nicomachean Ethics VI, 4) defines it as a “productive disposition accompanied by true reason” (héxis poiētikē metà lógou alēthoûs), distinguishing it from the four other ways the soul reaches truth: epistḗmē (demonstrative knowledge of the necessary), phrónēsis (practical wisdom concerning action, or prâxis), sophía (contemplative wisdom), and noûs (intuition of first principles). Unlike prâxis, whose end lies in the action itself, techne has its end in the work produced. Techne also knows the “why” (dióti) of what it makes — thus differing from mere experience (empeiría), which succeeds by habit without grasping causes: the physician who knows why a remedy cures possesses techne; one who merely applies it out of custom does not. Plato, in the Gorgias, ranks techne (a rational, teachable procedure able to give an account of itself) above mere routine or flattery (tribē/empeiría). Heidegger, in The Question Concerning Technology (a 1953 lecture), retrieves the Greek concept to contrast it with modern technology: whereas Greek techne was a “revealing” (alētheia) that let beings appear, modern technology operates as “enframing” (Gestell), reducing all of nature to “standing-reserve” (Bestand) available for exploitation.
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