What Does Aristotle’s Craftsperson Understand?

1 Introduction

After a long period of relative neglect, Aristotle’s views on technē have attracted considerable interest over the past few years. One aspect of this complex topic has, however, still received comparatively little attention, namely the question what exactly a craftsperson understands qua having mastered a craft. In this paper I defend the view that, for Aristotle, the content of productive understanding primarily concerns the nature of the object a craftsperson aims to bring into existence as well as its material requirements, and only secondarily things the craftsperson might do with a view to producing that object.^[1] On my interpretation, productive understanding does not as such have the form “In order to do A, do B, C, D etc.”, where A, B, C and D are action verbs; it does not, for example, say: “In order to build a house, dig a foundation, lay bricks, put in windows, etc.” Rather, a craftsperson primarily understands things such as these: “Health consists in a uniform state of the body; a uniform state requires warmth; and warmth requires …” – where this train of thought stops at some requirement that can immediately be produced through some action, e. g., warmth through rubbing the body. It is only at this point that action comes in.

In a nutshell, I claim that for Aristotle the epistēmē someone possesses qua having mastered a technē is product-centered rather than production-centered. The current literature usually takes the opposed, production-centered view of the craftsperson’s understanding. For example, Johansen raises the question whether technē

is primarily concerned with the production or the product. The Greek word ergon, like the English ‘work’, can be employed for the outcome of the craft (1106b9) but may also indicate the activity of production. Thus we may distinguish between health, for example, and healing, and ask which is the primary concern of medicine. (Johansen 2020, 79)

In his response, Johansen adopts a production-centered view:

We can then understand the proper object of the craft as the production (poiēsis) given that the product will be factored into the specification of production. Medicine, for example, will then have healing as its proper object, on the understanding that healing is the process that brings about health. (Johansen 2020, 79)

I will here defend a version of the product-centered view Johansen and many others reject, according to which the object of technē qua productive understanding is the product and its material conditions. To be sure, a technītēs essentially possesses, besides such understanding, also abilities to perform certain instrumentally basic productive actions. But according to my account, these abilities themselves neither flow directly from productive understanding nor involve an aspect of logos or epistēmē.

My evidence will be mainly textual – i. e., I will argue that this is the interpretation which fits best with Aristotle’s scattered remarks on technē and makes most sense given certain philosophical commitments expressed elsewhere. However, I will also indicate why I think this interpretation makes some philosophical sense, is not vulnerable to some obvious objections, and thus deserves to be taken seriously as a contender in the debate over the nature of practical expertise.

I proceed as follows. First I explain why technē is a form of understanding, by considering what it shares with its practical and theoretical cousins, and how it differs from them (section 1). In the course of this discussion, some preliminary evidence for my claim will emerge. Over the subsequent five sections, I give additional arguments in support of my claim. In my view, the analogy of craft and nature that Aristotle so frequently invokes suggests that a craftsperson understands the nature of his or her product and the material necessities required by the product’s existence (section 3). Further evidence comes from some of Aristotle’s remarks on the practical syllogism (section 4), from considerations concerning capacities for change in general (section 5), and from his views on why it is a two-way capacity (section 6). I end by mentioning several respects in which technē goes beyond productive understanding (section 7).

2 Craft as understanding

Aristotle repeatedly treats arts or crafts (technai) as a form of understanding (epistēmē).^[2] They are, for him, poiētikai epistēmai, bodies of productive understanding.^[3] In this, he is a faithful disciple of Plato, who hardly distinguishes between technē and epistēmē.^[4] However, it can easily seem that Aristotle’s talk of technē as an epistēmē is a mere façon de parler and that his agreement with Plato’s precedent of classifying technē as epistēmē is only verbal, whereas his considered view is that technē is really something quite different. For there are also passages in which Aristotle distinguishes technē from theoretical scientific understanding, most prominently perhaps in Metaphysics I.1, where theoretical epistēmē is a further stage on the ladder towards sophia, and in Nicomachean Ethics VI.3–4, where Aristotle distinguishes theoretical epistēmē from technē as different excellences of that part of the soul which has logos. In these passages, he even reserves the term epistēmē for theoretical understanding. Moreover, he classifies technē as dynamis, as a capacity for changing things, and theoretical understanding is no such capacity. So my first task will be to argue that Aristotle’s talk of technē as epistēmē is to be taken seriously. In the course of doing so, I will present some preliminary evidence for my claim that Aristotle’s notion of productive understanding is product-centered.

In a much-discussed passage in book IX of the Metaphysics, Aristotle classifies technē as understanding and at once as a power for change in a material the craftsperson is working on:

T1

Clearly some capacities [dynameis] will be non-rational [alogon] and some will be accompanied by reason [meta logou]. This is why all arts (technai), i. e. all productive forms of understanding (poiētikai epistēmai), are capacities (dynameis); they are principles (archai) of change in another thing or in the artist himself considered as another.[5] (Met IX.9, 1046b1–5; trans. modified)[6]

Apparently, for Aristotle technai are powers for changing things which one has in virtue of having mastered a logos. They are dynameis meta logou. The term logos is notoriously ambiguous, however. Among other things, it can refer to speech, to the power of reason, or to reasoning. Here, I think it is best taken to refer to an account or explanation.^[7] Technai are epistēmai precisely because they are meta logou, i. e., because they involve such accounts.^[8] Notice the subtlety of Aristotle’s terminology. He does not equate technai squarely with logoi. He does not say that having mastered a technē is the same as having mastered an account. Rather, he indicates that an important component of technē is understanding, and thus that technē has other components as well.^[9] I will return to this point below.

What account does Aristotle have in mind? In order to answer that question, let us turn to the beginning of the Metaphysics, where Aristotle describes what is at once a developmental story and an ordering of cognitive excellences, culminating in wisdom (sophia). He points out that, like medicine, technai arise from experience, and that experience in turn arises from observation of what happens in particular cases and from the memory of such observations. But he also insists that technē differs from mere experience in important respects:

T2

[T]echnē arises, when from many notions gained by experience one universal judgement about similar objects is produced. For to have a judgement that when Callias was ill of this disease this did him good, and similarly in the case of Socrates and in many individual cases, is a matter of experience; but to judge that it has done good to all persons of a certain constitution, marked off in one class, when they were ill of this disease, e. g. to phlegmatic or bilious people when burning with fever, – this is a matter of art. (Met. I.1, 981a5–12)

For Aristotle, the crucial point that distinguishes technē from empeiriā is that the former subsumes the cases that are gathered by the latter under a general concept. Technē apprehends the factor that Callias, Socrates etc., who all responded favorably to a certain treatment of a given disease, have in common. This common concept enables truly general predicative judgements concerning treatments. The experienced person judges “Callias, Socrates, …, responded favorably to treatment A of disease B.” Here, the expression “responding favorably to treatment A of disease B” is predicated of a group of individuals without indicating a feature that connects them. By contrast, the technītēs judges, say, “phlegmatic people respond favorably to treatment A of disease B.” Here, the expression “responding favorably etc.” is predicated of the common feature phlegmatic. We thus get a genuine universal judgement of the form “A is true of all (or most) Bs.” A genuine doctor, unlike an experienced healer, has mastered a set of concepts that allow for truly universal predications.^[10]

Such subsumption of individual cases under (the right) general concepts in turn makes causal explanations in the manner of the Posterior Analytics possible. Once we have a truly universal predication, we can begin to seek explanatory middle terms: we can, for instance, ask why phlegmatic people respond favorably to treatment A of disease B. And for Aristotle, it belongs to technē to have a grasp of such explanations:

T3

But yet we think that knowledge (eidenai) and understanding (epaiein) belong to technē rather than to experience, and we suppose artists to be wiser than men of experience (which implies that wisdom depends in all cases rather on knowledge); and this because the former know the cause, but the latter do not. For men of experience know that the thing is so, but do not know why, while the others know the ‘why’ and the cause. (Met. I.1, 981a24–30)

Thus, unlike experience, technē grasps truly general concepts and subsumes individual cases under them, concepts which in turn enable demonstrations of the facts grasped by means of explanatory middle terms. As Aristotle explains in the Posterior Analytics, this is precisely the structure of epistēmē. So technē, unlike empeiriā, is indeed a form of understanding, because its possessor is able to explain where an experienced person could only state facts, and only in inchoate ways for lack of having mastered the right concepts. The logos Aristotle had invoked at Metaphysics IX.9 thus turns out to be a grasp of certain concepts and the explanations they afford. Moreover, it is this logos component, i. e. their explanatory dimension, which gives technai certain properties that are characteristic of epistēmē.^[11] For instance, due to their logos component, technai, unlike experience, are amenable to being taught.^[12] And the logos component differentiates technai from natural powers in a characteristic way: technai are two-way instead of one-way powers.^[13]

So, according to Aristotle, technē is indeed a genuine form of understanding. However, it is only one species of understanding among others – it is productive understanding (poiētikē epistēmē), and thus contrasts with theoretical understanding (theoretikē epistēmē) and practical understanding (praktikē epistēmē). These different forms of understanding are distinguished by their characteristic manifestations, i. e., by the activities in which they are exercised, but more importantly by their object, i. e., by what they understand.^[14] Already at this point, I think, we get some preliminary evidence for my claim that the content of productive understanding concerns the product rather than the production.

On Aristotle’s view, the objects of theoretical understanding are necessary; they cannot be otherwise. Such necessary objects include God, mathematical objects such as numbers and geometrical figures, but also the essences of natural beings, like the heavenly spheres or the various animal species. By contrast, the objects of both practical and productive understanding are contingent; they can be otherwise. Practical and productive understanding in turn differ insofar as they are concerned with different kinds of objects: “Among things that can be otherwise are included both things made (poiēton) and things done (prakton)” (EN VI.4, 1140a1-2). Things made are the results or products of productive actions.^[15] By contrast, things done are themselves actions. The point of productive understanding is to enable production (poiēsis), which, however, is not an end in itself, but is undertaken with a view to bringing into existence a product that is distinct from the action that produces it, whereas the point of practical understanding is to secure for action (prāxis) a certain quality, namely that of doing or acting well (eu prattein).^[16] Aristotle thus dissects the class of everything there is into three distinct classes of ‘beings’: necessary things (that is the first class) differ from contingent things, and within the latter, products (the second class) differ from actions (the third class). He assigns the task of understanding the items within these three classes to three different forms of epistēmē. Notice that, on this view, what corresponds to productive understanding in the class of ‘beings’ are not primarily productive actions, but the products these actions bring into existence. That is because productive actions are merely a means for bringing a product into existence, and are thus both teleologically and ontologically secondary.^[17]

Alongside and closely related to this distinction of epistēmai according to their object is a distinction according to their manifestations, i. e., according to what the understanding is a power for. Theoretical understanding manifests in disinterested contemplation of the essences of things and of demonstrations of how their necessary attributes follow from these essences. Both practical and productive understanding, by contrast, manifest in thinking that aims at making a difference in the realm of contingencies.^[18] The former manifests in thought that governs prāxis, and ultimately, if all goes well, acting well, i. e., leading a good human life. The latter manifests in thought that guides poiēsis, i. e., productive action. We can thus say that productive understanding manifests in productive actions. But importantly, productive action is only the transitory coming-to-be of a product. For this reason, it seems, we should say that productive understanding ultimately manifests in these products.^[19]

Both the object-given and the activity-given criteria for distinguishing productive understanding from other forms of understanding are echoed in Nicomachean Ethics VI.4, Aristotle’s most comprehensive account of technē:

T4

All technē is concerned with coming into being, i. e. with contriving and considering (theōrein) how something may come into being which is capable of either being or not being, and whose origin is in the maker and not in the thing made; for technē is concerned neither with things that are, or come into being, by necessity, nor with things that do so in accordance with nature, since these have their origin in themselves. (1140a12–16)

A craft manifests itself, he says, in an intellectual achievement, namely in thinking about how something may come into being. A craft is a capacity to bring such things into existence in virtue of some understanding. It is exercised in thoughts concerning how these things may come into existence, which in turn guide actions that aim at their production. The ontological domain that craft thinking ranges over is delimited by two features. First, the things craftspeople understand and produce in virtue of this understanding are contingent, and thus capable of either being or not being; and second, that which explains why these things come into being are makers and not natures. Aristotle thus explains the nature of productive understanding through its productive character within a certain ontological domain: it is the very species of understanding in virtue of which one has a capacity for bringing a product into existence.^[20]

Notice, however, that Aristotle’s focus when spelling out the two characteristics that delimit the ontological domain of productive understanding is on the things that come into being and not on the producer and their productive actions. The two criteria he uses to single out this domain are about the products. One cannot produce what is eternal, necessary and unchanging, because the eternal is the way it is anyway, independently of anything we could do. What is eternal and necessary is therefore not an object of productive understanding, for such understanding empowers its possessor to make a difference to how things are, and this is possible only where how things are is not fixed in advance, i. e., in the realm of the contingent and changeable. The eternal and unchangeable is, in Aristotle’s system, the domain of two branches of theoretical understanding, namely theology, which concerns itself with unchangeable and ontologically independent being, and mathematics, which is of unchangeable yet ontologically dependent being.^[21] Furthermore, one cannot produce things that are contingent and exist by nature. The existence of natural things, such as animals and plants, is again not due to a productive action that would bring them into existence against the nature of the material out of which they come into being; rather, natural things are due to processes such as procreation that express the nature of the (paradigmatically living) beings who engage in them. According to Aristotle, natural science in general and biology in particular are the branches of theoretical epistēmē concerned with such natures. Technē is concerned with contingent being that depends for its existence on production, and thus on the exercise of a craft. It is concerned with products.

So far, I have argued that Aristotle’s classification of technē as epistēmē should be taken seriously, because technē shares with the other epistēmai certain important structural features, chief among which are their generality and the explanatory dimension encapsulated in a logos. Technē differs from other epistēmai, however, both in the kind of activity that manifests it and in the kind of object it is about. It has emerged that Aristotle thinks of these objects primarily in ontological terms, i. e., in terms of different kinds of being. I argued that his remarks suggest an interpretation according to which productive understanding’s object is primarily the product, i. e., the thing or state produced. In the following sections I will present further evidence for this claim and, in the course of doing so, also further elaborate it.

3 The analogy of craft and nature

My first piece of evidence comes from Aristotle’s analogy between craft and nature. I think we can get a better understanding of the content of productive understanding by working our way backwards, as it were, through the analogy.^[22] Its official purpose is of course to explain the teleology of natural phenomena by pointing out salient parallels to products and productive activities, where a prior understanding of the latter is presupposed. By paying close attention to the points Aristotle wants to make with respect to the workings of natures, we can likewise deduce some features of the conception of technē with which Aristotle works.

Aristotle repeatedly argues in his Physics and biological writings that natural substances and their characteristic properties, as well as natural processes, can only be understood teleologically, i. e., they must be explained as realizing natural aims: “action for an end is present in things which come to be and are by nature” (Phys. II.8, 199a7–8). Aristotle introduces this thought by pointing out that the explanations through which we make natural substances and processes intelligible exhibit an important structural similarity with explanations of products and their characteristic properties, as well as with the explanations of productive processes, i. e., the coming-to-be of products. In Physics II.9, he illustrates this common explanatory structure with an example:

T5

For instance, why is a saw such as it is? To effect so-and-so and for the sake of so-and-so. This end, however, cannot be realized unless the saw is made of iron. It is, therefore, necessary for it to be of iron, if we are to have a saw and perform the operation of sawing. What is necessary then, is necessary on a hypothesis, not as an end. Necessity is in the matter, while that for the sake of which is in the definition. (200a9–14)

Saws have a functional definition: they are designed in a way that enables them to cut in a particular manner. This function puts certain constraints on the material they are made of. In order to perform their function well, they must be made of a hard yet flexible material, and iron is the only or best such material. It is a necessary characteristic (a strict necessity, or anankē haplōs) of this material that it combines properties like hardness, flexibility and the capacity to be sharpened relatively easily. And that saws are tools for the operation of sawing, and thus require certain properties like hardness, flexibility and capacity to be sharpened, is contained in the definition of what a saw is. Aristotle’s point is that we can explain why a saw is made of iron by combining the two pieces of information: the knowledge that saws have the telos of sawing and the insight that iron is the most suitable material for realizing this telos. Given what saws are and what iron is, if saws are to be made, then it is necessary that they be made out of iron. This necessity is hypothetical, i. e., it is anankē ex hypotheseōs: it depends on the hypothesis of a telos, in our case the function of sawing. Aristotle’s key thought is that we can explain certain facts about living substances in a similar fashion. For instance, according to Aristotle, we can explain the upright posture of humans by pointing out, roughly, that a crucial part of their function is thought, that thought requires phantasmata, that the bodily organ responsible for generating phantasmata is the heart, and that the proper functioning of the heart is impeded if too much weight presses down on it. So thought requires that the heart not be pressed down, and one way of meeting this requirement, if not the best way, is our upright posture, the realization of which in turn has a physiological explanation.^[23]

So far, what Aristotle has described is the teleological explanation of things and states, i. e., of the products of productive actions and of living beings and their per se attributes. To this corresponds the teleological explanation of the coming-to-be of these things and states, i. e., of the poiēsis of products and the genesis of living beings. He describes the teleology of coming-to-be thus:

T6

If the end is to exist or does exist, that also which precedes it will exist or does exist; otherwise […] the end or that for the sake of which will not exist. […] If then there is to be a house, such-and-such things must be made or be there already or exist, or generally the matter relative to the end, bricks and stones if it is a house. (Phys. II.9, 200a24–27)

And again:

T7

Plainly, however, that cause is the first which we call that for the sake of which. For this is the account of the thing, and the account forms the starting point, alike in the works of art and in works of nature. For the doctor and the builder define health or house, either by the intellect or by perception, and then proceed to give the accounts and the causes of each of the things they do and of why they should do it thus. (PA I.1, 639b15–19)

The successive steps of the coming-to-be of a product – and likewise, so Aristotle wants to argue, of a living being – are derived from an understanding of what that product is, i. e., from its definition. A house, or health, has definition X, and X requires that certain material conditions be present, e. g., bricks and stones for a house or warmth and moisture for health. The productive process is concerned, then, with providing these necessary material preconditions step by step, e. g., by making bricks or by procuring warmth. Technai thus essentially involve abilities to produce those preconditions in which analyses of hypothetical necessities terminate. However, those abilities are not themselves forms of understanding, nor do they involve any logos. They are simply abilities to immediately bring about certain changes.

Explanations by hypothetical necessity have the following form:

(1) The hypothesis of an end A:	A is to be
(2) The definition of A:	As are B
(3) Material necessity:	F (uniquely or best) necessitates B
	(or part of B)
(4) Hypothetical necessity:	F is required for the sake of A

Hypothetical necessities (4) concern conditions that are necessary for the obtaining of that which is set as an end (1). Conversely, it follows from the end together with the definition (2) and the material necessities (3) that the hypothetically necessary conditions (4) must obtain: they are necessary in the sense that, without them, what was laid down as an end (1) cannot obtain. Such hypothetical necessities underlie productive processes because the product comes into being through the successive coming into being of the conditions necessary for its existence. It follows that a technītēs must, qua technītēs, understand the form of the product he means to produce, together with the material conditions that its existence requires.

In this argument, Aristotle presupposes that the genesis of living things has the same structure as productive processes. It is thus that “art imitates nature,” as Aristotle repeatedly claims (e. g., in Phys. II.2, 194a21, Phys. II.8, 199a15–16, and Meteor. IV.3, 381b6–7). The teleologies of art and nature differ only in two respects. The first difference lies in the source of the end (1): “For the art is origin and form of the product, but in another thing; while the movement of nature is in the thing itself, being derived from another nature which contains the form actualized” (GA II.1, 735a2–4). In the case of natural teleology, the telos constitutes the changed object as its nature or essence, which it received from its parents who had already the same essence, whereas in the case of artificial teleology the source of the end lies in the craftsperson, and thus comes from outside the changed object. The second difference, which follows from the first, consists in the manner in which the essence and material necessities become efficacious. In the case of natural teleology, material necessities are taken into service by the essence itself, as it were, whereas in the case of artificial teleology, a craftsperson makes use of them in virtue of her productive understanding.

I rehearse these familiar facts in order to bring out the following. The point of the analogy of craft and nature is that the teleological explanations through which we understand products and living beings, as well as the generative processes of poiēsis and genesis, have the same salient structural features. So our understanding of these phenomena will be relevantly similar. In particular, in both cases it will involve the grasp of a logos concerning an essence of what is or comes into existence as well as of the necessary material preconditions of such being or becoming. For the craftsperson, this means understanding the essence of the product, i. e., grasping what it is to be this kind of product. The form or essence is the telos which guides the craftsperson’s productive endeavors, and is to be realized in a given material. In this vein, Aristotle says:

T8	The craft (technē) is the account (logos) of the product (ergon) without the matter (hylē). (PA I.1, 640a31)

And again:

T9	But from art (technē) proceed the things of which the form is in the soul. By form I mean the essence of each thing and its primary substance. (Met. VII.7, 1032b1–2)

The natural scientist, by contrast, qua natural scientist grasps the eidos of the kind of living thing that is being investigated. However, grasping an essence alone does not suffice for full understanding in either case. What is needed in addition is an understanding of the characteristic material requirements for the realization of the eidê of the product or living being. Such understanding affords an explanation of how the abstract form is realized in particular instances, i. e. of how it can be and become “actual”. I think it is this latter bit of understanding, insight into the material prerequisites of a given essence or form, that is at the heart of Aristotelian productive understanding. Such understanding is what enables us to produce, according to Aristotle, because it makes us understand the explanatory connection between our end and the means we adopt. More precisely, it puts us into a position to understand why a certain condition must be in place if a given end is to exist, by demonstrating, through suitable middle terms, how the condition is required for the end’s existence. In this way, we comprehend why we must produce such and such a condition in order to bring our product into existence.

This reading is confirmed, I think, by the following remark in Physics II.2:

T10

[A]rt imitates nature, and it is the part of the same discipline to understand the form and the matter up to a point; e. g. the doctor has understanding of health and also of bile and phlegm, in which health is realized, and the builder both of the form of the house and of the matter, namely that it is bricks and beams, and so forth. If this is so, it would be the part of natural science also to understand nature in both its senses. (194a21–26)

Aristotle argues that, just as a craftsperson understands the product’s form, such as a definition of what health is or the plan of a house, as well as the material in which this form is realized, such as bile and phlegm or bricks and beams, so likewise the natural scientist understands a natural thing’s form as well as the matter that actualizes the form. The understanding that a technē provides its practitioner with is here clearly said to concern the product’s form as well as its material.

Notice that this reading of the analogy of craft and nature avoids an obvious objection. If productive understanding were about means–end relations among actions or action-types, and the understanding of the natural scientist had the same structure as the craftsperson’s knowledge, this would arguably imply a problematically anthropomorphic view of natures and natural ends. Natural teleology would be about someone (who? a nature as agent?) doing something (what? a ‘natural action’?) for the sake of an end. Such an explanation of natural teleology would surely be philosophically dubious, both for us and, more importantly, for Aristotle himself. If, however, the understanding is in both cases concerned with essences and their material prerequisites, no such problematic consequences are implied.

My way of exploiting Aristotle’s analogy between art and nature does raise a question, however. If Aristotle thinks that both the craftsperson and the natural scientist need to understand a form and the material requirements of its realization, one wonders what the difference is supposed to be between the knowledge of matter and form possessed by the natural scientist and that possessed by the craftsperson. For instance, how does a doctor’s understanding differ from a natural scientist’s understanding of the human body? What makes one of them productive understanding and the other theoretical natural-scientific understanding?^[24]

Aristotle comments on the relation between natural science and his favorite example of a technē, medicine, in a passage in his Parva Naturalia:

T11

But as to health and disease, not only the physician but also the natural scientist must, up to a point, give an account of their causes. The extent to which these two differ and investigate diverse provinces must not escape us, since facts show that their inquiries are, to a certain extent, at least co-terminous. For those physicians who are cultivated and learned make some mention of natural science, and claim to derive their principles from it, while the most accomplished investigators into nature generally push their studies so far as to conclude with an account of medical principles. (Parv.Nat. 27(21), 480b21–39)

In Aristotle’s opinion, medicine and natural science cover more or less the same ground – they are both concerned with health and disease and their causes. But they nevertheless approach the topic from different ends, as it were. Natural scientists work from general principles of nature towards medical principles, whereas physicians start with medical principles and seek to ground them in principles of nature.^[25]

Natural science and medicine as Aristotle conceives them differ in other respects as well. Perhaps most obvious is a difference in their telē, i. e., in what they are for, their aim or end.^[26] I already suggested above that for Aristotle the natural scientist’s theoretical understanding is an end in itself, its point lies in a grasp of what the things are that it is concerned with, whereas the doctor’s productive understanding has its point in something other than itself, namely production and, because poiēsis is not an end in itself, ultimately in the product of health.^[27] From these different teleologies follows a difference in the activities which manifest the natural scientist’s theoretical and the doctor’s productive knowledge. The former is fully active in contemplation, i. e., in awareness of demonstrative explanations among general features concerning health in general and human health in particular. The latter manifests in the productive action of curing a particular patient, and ultimately in the existence of a specimen of the kind of product it is concerned with – in our case the patient’s health. Furthermore, these different teleologies imply that the two bodies of knowledge have somewhat different unities and different foci. Roughly speaking, the natural scientist will strive to understand health as such, and his understanding of human health is part and parcel of a theory of health in general. The doctor’s understanding, by contrast, will only cover those aspects of the topic which are relevant to curing human patients.^[28] This point likely implies different emphases of content as well. For instance, doctors will be interested in diseases and their aetiologies and symptoms to an extent that natural scientists, who deal with characteristic universal properties of species, will not. So, although there may be some overlap in the contents of natural theoretical and productive understanding, these two bodies of understanding nevertheless differ formally through their different aims which give each of them their point and unity.

Moreover, it is worth pointing out that the kind of problematic overlap of epistēmai that the objection finds fault with exists only for some technai, like the art of medicine, which aims to restore the natural (i. e., healthy) condition of a human body. Others, like the art of building or cloak-making essentially construct artefacts. The epistēmē of houses or cloaks is of an artificial essence, which exists only in the context of a human culture and for which there is no natural scientific understanding.^[29]

4 Productive syllogisms

Productive understanding becomes efficacious through a craftsperson’s agency. As we have seen, practical understanding guides the expert’s productive actions. Since Aristotle explains animal agency in general and human rational agency in particular through the practical syllogism, we should expect productive understanding to enter such syllogisms at some point. In this section, I will argue that some of Aristotle’s examples bear out this expectation. In particular, I will argue that poiēsis is governed by a special type of practical syllogism, what I will call ‘productive syllogisms,’ and that the understanding that enters this type has the structure I identified in the previous section as characterizing productive knowledge.

The general idea of the practical syllogism is, of course, that certain representations can combine to produce action, just as representations can combine to produce another representation in theoretical inference.^[30] One of the representations that is needed for action in general is a desire. But what is the other representation with which the desire combines to issue in productive action, and ultimately in the product? We get a first clue in a passage from De Motu Animalium, which is supposed to illustrate Aristotle’s idea of an inference-like activity of combining representations that produces action. In the example, the reasoner starts with a general telos (“I need a covering”), which he specifies further in two steps until he reaches something he can do, an action:

T12	I need a covering, a coat is a covering: I need a coat. What I need I ought to make, I need a coat: I make a coat. And the conclusion ‘I must make a coat’ is an action. (MA 7, 701a17–20)

The preliminary conclusion – “I (must) make a coat” – is a more specific end, namely to engage in a productive action of making a coat. At this point, some understanding of how to produce takes over and, as it were, guides the productive process through some further syllogizing. The characteristic structure of such understanding is laid out in the remainder of the passage which describes a productive syllogism:

T13	And the action goes back to a starting-point (archē). “If there is to be a coat, there must first be this, and if this then this” – and straightaway one acts accordingly. (MA 7, 701a20–22; trans. modified)

The starting point or first premise is a conception of the product to be realized (“There is to be a coat”); the second premise states conditions that are necessary for attaining this end (“if there is to be a coat, there must first be this, and if this then this”) and the conclusion consists in an action which affirms these conditions (‘this’) practically, i. e., pursues them.^[31] The part of the syllogism that T13 lays out is specifically concerned with production, and the understanding it invokes is, we can assume, productive understanding. Aristotle states its content as a conception of a product and an analysis of material conditions that need to be in place for it to be produced: “if there is to be a coat, there must first be this, and if this then this.”

We find the same structure in another passage, from book VII of the Metaphysics. It deals with Aristotle’s favorite example for technē, the production of health when a doctor cures a patient:

T14

The healthy subject, then, is produced as the result of the following train of thought; since this is health, if the subject is to be healthy this must first be present, e. g. a uniform state of body, and if this is to be present, there must be heat; and the physician goes on thinking (noein) thus until he brings the matter to a final step which he himself can take. Then the process from this point onward, i. e. the process towards health, is called a ‘making’. (Met. VII.7, 1032b5–11)[32]

This syllogism starts from an end, the patient’s health, and a conception of that end’s nature, what health is. The second premise formulates a set of conditions that are necessary for the end’s existence. The conclusion consists in the immediate pursuit of the last of these conditions, and this pursuit is an action. Indirectly, Aristotle seems to think, one thereby produces the end which one set out to realize.^[33] By successively realizing the conditions that need to be in place for the patient to be healthy, one brings about the patient’s health. Again, the productive understanding that is at work in this syllogism gives a partial analysis of material preconditions, which are here derived from an understanding of the product’s nature or essence: “since this is health, if the subject is to be healthy this must first be present, e. g., a uniform state of body, and if this is to be present, there must be heat.”

It may be tempting at this point to object that Aristotle’s remarks on the practical syllogism are couched throughout in the language of acts and actions. For instance, A.W. Price has recently forcefully argued for such a reading.^[34] I concede that this may be true for genuinely practical syllogisms, i. e., those concerned with prāxis, the boulesis from which it arises and the prohairesis which guides it – the sphere, incidentally, from which Price takes most of his examples. But I claim that things are different with productive syllogisms. After all, prāxis has its own quality, doing well (euprāxia), as its telos, and not something beyond itself, a separable product or end result.^[35] Because of this teleological self-sufficiency of prāxis, it seems to make a lot of sense for Aristotle to conceive of the objects of choice and wish as an act or action: we wish and choose to do things, not that something be the case, because the point of so wishing and choosing ultimately lies in doing these things well. However, none of this holds for poiēsis, whose telos is not its own quality, but a product that is to be made or produced. We might therefore assume that the thinking the producer engages in is focused on that product and the material which is turned into it. And the two productive syllogisms I considered above do indeed suggest that. Consider again T13, the second part of the cloak syllogism in De Motu, whose topic is a poiēsis, the production of a cloak. When Aristotle specifies the train of thought that guides the tailor in his tailoring, he does not say “if a cloak is to be made, this must be made first, then this, etc.”; rather, he says “if a cloak is to be [himation estai], this must with necessity (be), and if this then this.” In other words, for Aristotle, the tailor’s thinking is centered on the piece he is working on and the material he works with, and he is figuring out what must be the case with this material for it to turn into a cloak. An action comes in only at the end, when the tailor starts to procure the material conditions, the ‘thises,’ which the analysis has articulated. This seems to be even clearer in T14, the medical syllogism from Metaphysics VII. Again, the topic is explicitly introduced as poiēsis. When Aristotle specifies the thoughts of the doctor curing her patient, he again talks about things that need to be the case with the patient (he is to be healthy), or his body (it must be in a uniform state, or hot), rather than with actions the doctor needs to perform. These come in only at the end, in the form of pursuing the bodily conditions so specified and thereby bringing them into existence. In both cases, Aristotle uses the language of being (i. e., what is or should be the case with the product or the material) and not of doing (i. e., what the tailor or the doctor might do) when he articulates the contents of the producer’s productive thinking. Notice, moreover, that this reading has some phenomenological appeal, too. It seems correct that a tailor is focused, in the thinking that guides his production, on his product and the material he is working with, and not on himself and what he can or is to do. Similarly, a doctor’s thoughts in treating her patient are centered on the patient, his body and bodily defects and needs, rather than on her own actions.

On behalf of the objection we are considering, one might point out that in some passages Aristotle does describe the intermediate steps in a productive syllogism as makings rather than conditions that are envisaged as results of makings.^[36] For example, a few lines after T14, he writes:

T15

Of productions and movements one part is called thinking and the other making, – that which proceeds from the final step of the thinking is making. And each of the intermediate steps is taken in the same way. I mean, for instance, if the subject is to be healthy his bodily state must be made uniform. What then does being made uniform imply? This or that. And this depends on his being made warm. What does this imply? Something else. And this something is present potentially; and what is present potentially is already in the physician’s power. (Met. VII.7, 1032b15–22)

I think, however, that Aristotle’s focus on makings in T15 is easily explained. He begins by explicitly distinguishing between thinking (i. e., reasoning), which goes from an end towards an appropriate means, and making (i. e., producing), which proceeds in the opposite direction, from a means towards an end. He points out that the long chain of reasoning in T14 can be split up into separate steps. In each of them, a (subordinate) productive syllogism corresponds to a making that brings the agent closer to his desired end result. Note, however, that each of these little syllogisms corresponds to the pattern I have analyzed above:

1. The patient is to be healthy.

2. Health consists in a uniform state of the body.

3. So: the patient’s body must be made uniform.

Premise (2), the definition of what health is, is suppressed in T15; Aristotle only states premise (1), the end, and conclusion (3), the intermediate step to be taken on the way towards health. This intermediate step is not yet something the physician can do immediately, and so needs to be analyzed further:

1. The patient’s body must be made uniform.

2. Uniformity requires X.

3. X requires the body’s being warm.

4. So: the body needs to be made warm.

In this piece of reasoning, (3) states the envisaged (subordinate) end, (4) and (5) articulate requirements for the presence of that end, and (6) states yet another subordinate conclusion, which consists in a further step that needs to be taken if the patient is to become healthy. But again, the body’s being warm is not something that the physician can bring about immediately. So yet another step of reasoning must be taken:

1. The body needs to be made warm.

2. A body’s warmth requires Y (where bringing about Y is in the agent’s power).

3. So: Y is brought about.

Again, (6) designates warmth as a (subordinate) end that needs to be realized (if the superordinate ends are to be realized), and (7) articulates once more a necessary condition for that end – ‘something’ that needs to be present if the end is to be. Interestingly, Aristotle concludes by stating that this ‘something’ is already potentially present in the patient. So he clearly talks about some condition in the patient. Apparently for Aristotle, to say that the condition is potentially present in the patient is to implicitly refer to the physician’s powers to actualize this potentiality. The condition is potentially present in the sense that it can be actualized by the physician through a suitable productive action. Where this further requirement – that the condition can be actualized immediately – is met, the final conclusion of the reasoning is reached and the initiation of the productive action commences.

I conclude that productive syllogisms articulate a necessary connection between an end and a productive action. Such action consists in realizing the end’s material preconditions, and they are necessary in the sense that, without them, the end in question cannot be attained.^[37] In T14, Aristotle suggests that an understanding of hypothetically necessary conditions of health is contained in the understanding of what health is: he says that “since this is health, if the subject is to be healthy, this must first be present etc.” Apparently, by Aristotle’s lights, an understanding of the essence or form of material beings entails an understanding of the material prerequisites that need to be present for the realization of that form. According to my reading, the productive understanding that enters into productive syllogisms provides a craftsperson with knowledge of this kind.

5 Craft as capacity with an account

My third argument picks up on Aristotle’s observation, in T1, that every art or craft (technē) has two aspects. It is both understanding (epistēmē) and capacity (dynamis). A craft is on the one hand a species of understanding, namely productive understanding, because the technītēs understands the efficacy of a means with a view to an end. On the other hand, it is also a species of capacity, because a craft is the explanatory principle for changes in things that are different from the possessor of the capacity. Thus, for Aristotle a craft is understanding that enables its possessor to produce; and, equivalently, it is a capacity for production that arises from understanding.^[38] It is such a capacity because productive understanding enters into the premises of a productive syllogism that concludes in a productive action, and ultimately in the existence of a product. In this section, I will argue that, because Aristotle’s metaphysics of change and capacities for change is patient-centered in that the change in question is in the patient, we should expect productive understanding to be about the patient in which the change takes place.

Aristotle’s concept of dynamis is complex and ambiguous, so I suggest first sorting out some of its ambiguities. In T1, Aristotle claims that every technē is a capacity for change in something other. He thereby identifies genera under which technē falls as a species. Technai are, first, capacities; and, second and more specifically, they are capacities that manifest in changes in other things, i. e., in things that are different from the possessor of the capacity. The point of this second characterization is a distinction between kinds of capacities. As we are supposed to learn in Metaphysics IX.1–9, there are not only capacities for changes in something other, i. e., for kinēseis, but also capacities for complete activities, i. e., for energeiai (in the strict sense that contrasts with kinēsis). Aristotle’s examples for energeiai, strictly speaking, are being, living, seeing and thinking. Technai are capacities of the first and not of the second kind. They are kinetic capacities, as I will henceforth call them.

Kinetic capacity is in turn itself a genus which subsumes species under it. There are passive capacities for suffering change, which are situated in patients of change, as well as active capacities for effecting change, which are situated in agents. This is because kinetic capacities manifest in changes, kinēseis, and, according to Aristotle, changes are relational or bipolar structures. They always involve the two poles of agent (in the broad sense of that which changes something) and patient (in the broad sense of that which is being changed). Changes are in the patient, but they come from the agent, which means that the source (archē) of change, that which ultimately explains it, is to be found in the agent.^[39] Through the change, the patient becomes different from how it was before the change occurred, but the agent remains unchanged. Change requires that the patient fulfil a certain condition as well. An agent can produce property F in the patient only if the patient already is potentially F, and thereby has the capacity to undergo a change towards F. In changing the patient, the agent actualizes the patient’s potentiality to be other than it actually is. For example, when a grey wall is painted white, the actually grey wall actualizes its potentiality to be white.^[40] Changes thus always actualize two modal properties at once. In the agent, this is its capacity (dynamis) to change something, and thus to make something different from how it was before the change. This is the agent’s kinetic capacity. In the patient, the relevant modal property is its potentiality to be, in virtue of an action (in the broadest sense) by something else, other than it was before the action. Technai are active capacities for change; they are archai of kinēseis.

But only some of the active kinetic capacities are technai, or productive capacities. Plants and animals, as well as the elements, are natural agents, i. e., they are, in virtue of their natures, endowed with capacities for changing their environment. But these capacities are not technai: for example, in Physics II.8, 199a20–20, Aristotle explicitly denies that it is technai which enable spiders to knit their webs or swallows to build their nests. That is presumably because Aristotle denies that the spiders’ knitting or the swallows’ building are guided by a logos, as a craftsperson’s knitting or building would be. The specific difference of technai is thus that they are meta logou.

The following taxonomic tree displays these distinctions:

What I would like to emphasize is that, according to Aristotle, change in general is patient-centered. The change occurs in the patient, and it is a potentiality of the patient that is thereby being actualized. Poiēsis inherits this feature from its genus, kinēsis. Here, too, production actualizes a potential that lies dormant in the material, and the productive change takes place in the material. As Aristotle says in the Metaphysics:

T16:

Where, then, the result is something apart from the exercise, the actuality is in the thing that is being made, e. g. the act of building is in the thing that is being built and that of weaving in the thing that is being woven, and similarly in all other cases, and in general the movement is in the thing that is being moved. (IX.8, 1050a30–b34)

This has the somewhat surprising consequence that a productive action is literally located in the patient, i. e., in the material or product, and not in the agent.^[41] When a craftsperson actualizes their craft, their productive action is going on in the material they are working on.

I think this implies that, for Aristotle, a craftsperson is very much focused on the material and the product to be brought into existence. For this reason, the craftsperson first and foremost needs to understand the patient of production, i. e., the material’s potential to be a certain product. Since potentialities in general are defined in terms of their full actuality, this entails grasping what it is to be such a product, i. e., the product’s essence, as well as the material requirements of the product’s existence and how they are potentially present in the material at hand. In other words, the craftsperson needs to understand the form of the product to be produced as well as the properties of the material which need to be developed in producing it.

This emphasis on the product may seem strange at first. Should we not expect crafts to be first and foremost about productive actions? And should we not therefore expect that productive understanding is an understanding of what to do when one wants to produce a certain kind of product? I think my thesis becomes less strange when we recall some of Aristotle’s background metaphysical commitments. Production (poiēsis), as a kind of change (kinēsis), is only a transitory kind of being that is sandwiched between the non-being of the product and its full being. It is, as it were, a being-that-is-towards-the-full-being-of-the-product, and thus has only a second-rate metaphysical dignity. The being of productive change is, ontologically speaking, derivative of the full being of that product. Since full understanding mirrors the order of being, we should likewise expect an understanding of the coming-to-be of the product to be subordinate to and derivative of an understanding of the being of that product, including an understanding of the hypothetical necessities through which the product’s form governs the material in which it is realized. What is metaphysically fully real, and thus intelligible, in production is the account of the product and of what needs to be present if it is to be. But once we have an understanding of form and hypothetical necessities, we can use it to effect the successive realization of the conditions necessary for the being of the product, and through their realization, to bring about the being of the product. This is what, for Aristotle, productive action consists in.

It may be objected, however, that whereas my view of the primacy of the product arguably has some plausibility for the kind of technē at play in the production of a material object, on the face of it, not all technai are of this sort. For example, it is not obvious how the view would be applied to the technai of navigation, generalship or flute-playing. In all of these cases, the kind of understanding the craftsperson needs does not seem reducible to knowing the matter and form of some end product.

In response, I would like to point out two things. First, Aristotle’s account is arguably a bit lopsided and suffers from what Wittgenstein once called an unbalanced diet of examples.^[42] After all, the only technai Aristotle considers in any detail, and thus the ones he seems to think of as paradigmatic, are medicine, house-building and tailoring, and these do conform pretty well to Aristotle’s view as I have interpreted it. It is this concentration on a few examples which raises the question of how the account can be extended to cover other technai, such as those mentioned in the objection. Second, it seems to me that Aristotle’s characterization of technē as poiētikē epistēmē is not meant to give a full account of craft, as it does not cover some important aspects of the phenomenon. I will return to this point in section 7.

6 Two-way capacities

As I already mentioned in passing in section 3, Aristotle not only claims that technē is a dynamis, but more specifically claims that it is (in the sense of: is identical to) a two-way capacity. He thinks that capacities that are meta logou, and thus technai, empower their possessor to produce contrary results. In this section, I will argue that my interpretation of productive understanding offers an elegant explanation of this claim.

On my reading, when Aristotle says that dynameis meta logou enable their possessors to produce contraries, he assumes that productive capacities are meta logou in that they depend on a body of understanding which affords explanations for the existence as well as the absence of some property. Someone who has mastered a technē understands the conditions that must be present if a certain object is to exist. If all of these necessary conditions are present, the object does exist. Since the conditions are necessary, however, the object does not exist where any of them is absent. This means that a person who knows how to see to it that the desired object exists by seeing to it that all its necessary (and together sufficient) conditions are present, thereby also knows how to prevent its existence, because he understands how to see to it that at least one of the necessary conditions for its existence does not obtain. For example, someone who can cure a patient, can ipso facto also make her sick, or even kill her, because he understands what the necessary conditions for her health are, and thus can see to it that at least one of them fails to be present.^[43] I submit that it is in this sense that a craft empowers its possessor to produce contraries.^[44]

I thus read Metaphysics IX.2 and IX.5 in the light of a passage in VII.7:

T17	For even contraries have in a sense the same form; for the substance of a privation is the opposite substance, e. g. health is the substance of disease; for it is by its absence that disease exists; and health is the formula and the knowledge in the soul. (1032b2–5)

The relevant notion of contraries does not concern actions and omissions, but contrary results of actions, like health and disease. If some of the necessary conditions of health are absent, you get its privation, disease. This interpretation is, I think, confirmed by the following passage from Physics II.3, which states a general principle of Aristotle’s physics of which the contrary results of two-way powers are just a special case:

T18	Further the same thing is the cause of contrary results. For that which by its presence brings about one result is sometimes blamed for bringing about the contrary by its absence. Thus we ascribe the wreck of a ship to the absence of the pilot whose presence was the cause of its safety. (195a11–14)

Apparently, for Aristotle, contrary results can quite generally be explained by the presence or absence of a necessary condition. If a pilot is necessary for a ship’s safety, his absence explains why the ship runs aground. What is special about explanations that invoke a craft is only that this presence or absence is itself explained by an understanding of these necessary conditions – i. e., by productive understanding.

Whether and in which of the two ways the capacity is actually exercised, i. e., which of the contrary results are brought into existence by the agent, does not come from the capacity itself. Productive understanding on its own is not efficacious. It leads to action only in the context of a suitable desire. Its efficacy comes from a desire for one of the two contraries, by which the understanding is taken into service. This desire is not part of the understanding, but when it is added, i. e., when the end specified in the first premise of a productive syllogism of which productive understanding is the second premise is in fact pursued, a productive action ensues which realizes the desire.^[45]

One may wonder, however, how Aristotle’s account of technē as a two-way power fits with what comes closest to his ‘official definition’ of technē in Nicomachean Ethics VI.4. There he writes:

T19	technē […] hexis tis meta logou alēthous poiētikē estin. (EN VI.4, 1140a20–21)

Aristotle thus characterizes craft as a hexis, and not just a dynamis, meta logou. Hexeis are settled dispositions to do certain things. Unlike a dynamis, a hexis includes a motivation to do what it disposes one to do. This raises the question how a technē can really be two-way. How can technē at the same time, qua dynamis meta logou, leave open which of two ways the technītēs chooses, and, qua hexis, settle it that he chooses one of the two ways?

Perhaps there is a genuine tension here. If so, it is a tension not only in my account, but in Aristotle’s text. I think, however, that the following proposal goes at least some way towards alleviating that tension. For Aristotle, technē qua productive understanding is a two-way power. But the logos component that gives craft its intellectual credentials and promotes it to a specific form of knowledge or understanding does not exhaust what technē is. When one learns a craft, one not only comes into productive understanding, but at the same time acquires certain motivations and dispositions towards pursuing certain ends that are characteristic of the craft. For instance, a doctor acquires the disposition to make patients healthy rather than sick. Thus, technē in the fullest sense, and not merely viewed qua productive understanding, is a hexis for realizing specific ends. Viewed in this way, it is no longer two-way. This does not exclude, however, that it can also be viewed in a more restricted way, by focusing on its character as epistēmē, and when seen in this restricted way, it appears as a two-way power.

7 Some ways in which technē goes beyond poiētikē epistēmē

I indicated that Aristotle thinks of technē as a capacity that is meta logou. It goes beyond a logos in essentially being a dynamis or (as he emphasizes in other places) a hexis of production. What a technē is is thus not exhausted by its logos component; it has other components or aspects as well. To be sure, these different aspects are just this: aspects of what is first and foremost a unity. But they can nevertheless be conceptually separated from one another by the philosopher who gives an account of what a technē is. I shall end by briefly mentioning three important aspects of technē which, to my mind, are not covered by saying that it is productive understanding.

First, if productive syllogisms are to conclude in productive action, mastery of a technē needs to include abilities to engage in instrumentally basic actions. Aristotle is well aware of the fact that understanding of a product’s form and the hypothetical necessities that need to be in place if it is to be realized does not suffice for productive action. Productive action also requires abilities to perform productive actions, i. e., to effect changes and bring about results in a given material. It requires, in other words, abilities to make something. I by no means want to downplay this aspect of technē. What I want to claim, however, is that for Aristotle these abilities are in an important sense conceptually separate from the understanding involved in technē. For Aristotle, a technītēs has the ability to identify necessary conditions required by the product they want to bring into existence. This ability is their productive understanding. In addition, the technītēs also has abilities to effect changes that result in the existence of those conditions. These further abilities to make something, however, are not epistēmai, and do not involve a logos. They are acquired by training rather than learning, and do not afford any understanding in Aristotle’s sense. These abilities to perform instrumentally basic productive actions kick in when the work of understanding is done, i. e., when basic necessary conditions of a desired result have been identified. As Aristotle says in T14, a technītēs analyses or thinks (noein) “until he brings the matter to a final step which he himself can take.” Once one has reached this point, as T13 puts it, “straightaway one acts accordingly.” In other words, once one has hit upon a hypothetically necessary condition one can produce directly through a basic productive action, one acts straightaway, thereby exercising an ability to perform such an action.

In order to perform such instrumentally basic productive actions, one must have mastered certain routines and acquired the kind of dexterity that one picks up through repeated exercise. In this respect, craft is similar to virtue: both are habits that have an intellectual component, which is acquired through learning, as well as a non-intellectual component, the shaping of arational capacities, which is acquired through training and repeated exercise. Aristotle points out and exploits this analogy when he says:

T20

[V]irtues we get by first exercising them, as also happens in the case of the arts as well. For the things we have to learn before we can do, we learn by doing, e. g. men become builders by building and lyre-players by playing the lyre; so too we become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts. (EN II.1, 1103a14–b3)

In the case of the virtues, it is not enough that reason grasps the right account of the human good. In addition, the non-rational part of the soul needs to be habituated through training so that our passions and pleasures are in line with the dictates of reason. Only through such training, i. e., through acting justly, temperately, bravely etc. under the guidance of a virtuous teacher, do these habits form. Likewise, Aristotle seems to think, in the case of crafts, it is not enough that reason has productive understanding. In addition, our potentials of bodily motion need to be shaped through repeated exercise, which again consists in performing productive actions of lyre-playing or house-building with an experienced practitioner as our guide. However, I would argue that such bodily skills are a separate aspect of technai. For Aristotle, it is not this skill aspect that makes technai count as epistēmai.

Second, since productive understanding is general, but production is concerned with the particular, technē must essentially employ aisthēsis in order to get in touch with particulars. General productive understanding needs to be applied to the particular case at hand, and this requires perception.^[46] Moreover, learning a craft entails training one’s perceptual capacities to be sensitive to those very specific situational features that bear on the craft’s proper exercise. Aristotle seems to indicate some awareness of these facts when he remarks that “errors occur in two ways: we err either in calculation or in perception when actually doing the thing. In medicine it is possible to make a mistake in both ways, whereas in the case of a scribe’s skill, it is possible only in perception and action” (EE II.10, 1226a35–b2; trans. M. Woods). Over and above his medical understanding, which is employed in calculations about the causes of a given health condition and the effectiveness of possible cures, a doctor also and crucially needs perception in order to apply his general medical understanding to the case at hand. This is why he can make mistakes in both dimensions.^[47] However, although there is no doubt that the special perceptual sensitivity which is characteristic of craftspeople forms an integral part of technē, Aristotle nowhere suggests that it is part of poiētikē epistēmē. This is in line with his firm conviction that epistēmē is concerned with general facts, whereas perception grasps particulars.

Third, my account is partial in that it explains neither how technai are for some good, nor how they are intellectual virtues. For Aristotle, every technē is for the sake of some good.^[48] In other words: technai have constitutive ‘standard’ ends. The art of healing is for the sake of health; the art of house-building for the sake of houses, etc. Thus, every craft is for the sake of a characteristic end, which in turn is a means for some superordinate end that defines another (and thereby superordinate) craft. Furthermore, all of them are, directly or (mostly) indirectly, for the sake of living well. That a ‘standard’ end is constitutive of craft explains why, for Aristotle, there is an asymmetry between the two opposites to which a craft empowers: it is per se for one of them, and only per accidens for its opposite.^[49] A doctor who is killing a patient instead of curing him is exercising her two-way power, but she is thereby misusing it in a characteristic way. I think the constitutive involvement of standard ends in crafts also explains why Aristotle reckons technai among the virtues.^[50] As I already noted, the ends which constitute crafts are not any old ends people may or may not happen to have. They ultimately get their point from the ‘super’-end of human well-being. The only reason that it is good to master a craft, i. e., the only reason that having mastered it is a human excellence, is that crafts characteristically serve ends that are, in turn, ultimately in the service of living a good human life.

I conclude that to say that technē is productive understanding in the sense I have explained cannot be more than a partial explication of what a craft is. For possession of a technē goes beyond knowledge of forms and hypothetical necessities in at least these three respects: it involves perceptual capacities; it requires instrumentally basic productive abilities – i. e., the ability to engage in certain types of action immediately – as well as the dexterity and skill that are necessary for exercising them well; and it requires embracing the constitutive end of the craft and how it contributes to leading a good human life.

Does this mean that Aristotle’s account of technē, as I have interpreted it, is incomplete or inadequate, because it over-assimilates productive to theoretical understanding and thereby fails to properly incorporate these other aspects?^[51] Certainly, Aristotle was not blind to the three further aspects of craft that I have mentioned, as the texts I have quoted indicate. However, it can still be true that he failed to properly integrate them into his conception of technē as a form of epistēmē. In response, I would like to point out two things. First, we should distinguish between an account of craft qua understanding and an account of craft per se. My interpretation of Aristotle’s view aims at reconstructing his account of craft insofar as it is a form of understanding, which leaves open that technē can be other things as well, and likewise leaves open that all of these aspects essentially belong together. Second, from the point of view of his theoretical background commitments, Aristotle had very good reasons to assimilate productive to theoretical understanding as much as he does. For him, his subtle and complex analysis of theoretical epistēmē provided a model for the intellectual credentials of any cognitive achievement. If something aspired to be a form of understanding, it should better conform to this model, or at least resemble it very closely. So it is no surprise that he tried to recover something of this structure in technē as well, which had traditionally been treated as a paradigm case of knowledge or understanding.^[52]

DA

On the Soul

DeCael.

On the Heavens

De Sensu

Sense and Sensibilia

EE

Eudemian Ethics

EN

Nicomachean Ethics

GA

Generation of Animals

MA

Movement of Animals

Met.

Metaphysics

Meteor.

Meteorology

PA

Parts of Animals

Parv.Nat.

Parva Naturalia

Phys.

Physics

Post.An.

Posterior Analytics

Pr.An.

Prior Analytics

Rhet.

Rhetoric

Top.

Topics