This chapter locates the Sophists within the context of earlier Greek wisdom traditions and efforts by a variety of individuals (from Hesiod to Parmenides and Pindar) to establish and communicate their own poetic and/or intellectual authority. The Sophists participated in long-standing debates over the relationship between sophia and technê, and over tensions surrounding physical versus intellectual skills, learning, and teaching. They also looked back to the practice of wisdom and maxim collection. There was no dominant tradition under which one could unify the manifestations of sophia in Archaic and early Classical Greece; this complexity was an important aspect of the sophistic inheritance, and is the background against which we must measure individual efforts to claim distinctive achievement. The analysis traces the importance of Hesiodic and quasi-Hesiodic wisdom collections, the emergence of the inquiry into nature and of intellectual and cultural experts known as “sages” (sophoi), and the representation of sophia in sympotic and epinician poetry.

At Against the Mathematicians (M) 2.10 Sextus Empiricus defines technê along Stoic lines, as (a) an organized system of knowledge (b) directed towards an end useful for life. This raises a question. Does the sceptic’s own art satisfy conditions (a) and (b) and thereby qualify as a technê? This is not an idle question. For if it turns out that the sceptic’s art does qualify as a technê, then one might reasonably ask whether, on pain of inconsistency, Sextus ought not to train his guns on the sceptic’s art just as he trains his guns on the liberal arts of grammar, rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic, astrology and music in M 1–6. The chapter explore the different possible answers that can be given to the question and argues that, though scepticism satisfies condition (b) for a technê, it fails to satisfy condition (a). While skepticism has eudaimonistic use, in that establishes ‘unperturbedness’ (ataraxia), not fixed target or subject matter like technai proper, but one that changes according to dialectical context. Skeptic art has then an asystematic subject matter. Scepticism is, therefore, a non-technical art that differs fundamentally from the kinds of technai Sextus discusses, and attacks, in M 1–6.

According to Aristotle, a technê is both a productive power and a kind of epistêmê. In so far as it is a kind of epistêmê, it deals with universals, involves grasping explanations and does not concern itself with the accidental. But a puzzle arises about how something can both be an epistêmê in this sense and at the same time be a power for producing things. Successful production requires the ability to make adjustments to take account of indefinitely variable circumstances. In this chapter, Coope argues that this essential flexibility of technê marks an important difference between it and theoretical epistêmê. Whereas a theoretical epistêmê is potentially complete (in the sense that it is possible in principle to possess all the explanations of the epistêmê), a technê is indefinitely improvable (however many explanations one grasps, there will always be further explanations to be worked out). Because of this, even an expert in a technê needs to have the capacity for working out new explanations. It is possible for Aristotle to think of technê in this way just because he (unlike, for instance, later Christian authors) does not think there is such a thing as a divine technê.

Virtue is agreed to be a technê – or at least very like one – by Socrates, Plato, the Stoics and Aristotle (who is deeply ambivalent about the technê model). But in what ways is technê a useful model for virtue? Barney argues that technê has two important dimensions. First, technê provides a small-scale, well-understood model for the general, unspecialized practical rationality that would constitute virtue. Relevant features of a technê so understood include perceptual, rational and deliberative capacities, and a disinterested orientation to an end. Second, a technê is a practical identity: a social role the adoption of which provides a deliberative standpoint. Adopting a practical identity involves accepting its normative authority: we undertake to be a good doctor, mother, etc. Understanding technê´s normative authority as a practical identity (rather than as knowledge) solves several standard puzzles about virtue as technê. Moreover, the model can be defended against some common objections if virtue is taken as a kind of ‘super-technê’, with the human good as its end and, accordingly, some special features: it directs all the other technai, its adoption as a practical identity is non-optional for a rational human being, and its reasons for action are non-defeasible.

These two chapters form a conceptual unity. Their aim is, first, to present and, then, to compare the concepts of technê (art, craft, discipline, expertise) used, respectively, by the Stoics and the Epicureans in different philosophical domains – notably, in cosmology, epistemology and ethics. The main issues to be discussed include the definition of a technê; the criteria determining a technê, the importance of rules and method, the role of experience and practice, the structure of every technê in so far as it is directed towards a goal, the necessary and sufficient conditions for the transmissibility of different sorts of technai and the common assumption that the technai are beneficial for life. Moreover, Tsouna argues that the notions of technê occurring in Stoic and Epicurean texts differ, and she explains how they differ. She suggests that one reason for that fact is that these two schools react in different ways to Plato’s rationalism about technê. On the one hand, the Stoics’ creative appropriation of Plato leads them to formulate a principally rationalistic notion of technê, which is manifest, for example, in their cosmological creationism (cf. the notion of technikon pur), the epistemological distinction between first-order technai and the epistêmê of the wise man, and their ethical conception of the art of living. On the other hand, the Epicureans react to the Platonic heritage in a more negative way and appear to modify their views about technê accordingly. Vis-à-vis the Stoics, they exhibit greater flexibility regarding the criteria of ‘technicity’ and attribute more value to common experience than many Stoics do. Their physical theory precludes any idea of divine craftsmanship. As for Epicurean epistemology and ethics, both involve uses of technê consistent with Epicurean empiricism and the ethical view that pleasure or the absence of pain is the supreme good.

In the early treatise Ennead V.9, Plotinus discusses whether the arts are there in the intelligible realm, and concludes that they are at least partly. The chapter’s first part discusses a number of questions that arise. What is exactly the principle of division for which arts or which parts of an art are in the intelligible realm? What is the status of the arts in the intelligible world? Are there Platonic Forms of the arts? In a later treatise, V.8., Plotinus argues that rather than imitating sensible objects, some artists concerned with producing beautiful sensible objects imitate the intelligible paradigm of beauty. Emilsson discusses this claim, which seems a clear deviation from the account of mimetic art in Plato’s Republic. In the latter half of the chapter, Emilsson addresses Plotinus’ demythologisation of Plato’s Timaeus. Plotinus replaces the Demiurge of the Timaeus with the universal intellect and the World-Soul, which do not deliberate. However, Plotinus does not reject entirely any craftsman model, for he appeals to performance arts, which do not involve deliberation, in explaining how natural processes flow from higher principles. Emilsson then discusses what sort of conception of the arts lies behind this view.

These two chapters form a conceptual unity. Their aim is, first, to present and, then, to compare the concepts of technê (art, craft, discipline, expertise) used, respectively, by the Stoics and the Epicureans in different philosophical domains – notably, in cosmology, epistemology and ethics. The main issues to be discussed include the definition of a technê; the criteria determining a technê, the importance of rules and method, the role of experience and practice, the structure of every technê in so far as it is directed towards a goal, the necessary and sufficient conditions for the transmissibility of different sorts of technai and the common assumption that the technai are beneficial for life. Moreover, Tsouna argues that the notions of technê occurring in Stoic and Epicurean texts differ, and she explains how they differ. She suggests that one reason for that fact is that these two schools react in different ways to Plato’s rationalism about technê. On the one hand, the Stoics’ creative appropriation of Plato leads them to formulate a principally rationalistic notion of technê, which is manifest, for example, in their cosmological creationism (cf. the notion of technikon pur), the epistemological distinction between first-order technai and the epistêmê of the wise man, and their ethical conception of the art of living. On the other hand, the Epicureans react to the Platonic heritage in a more negative way and appear to modify their views about technê accordingly. Vis-à-vis the Stoics, they exhibit greater flexibility regarding the criteria of ‘technicity’ and attribute more value to common experience than many Stoics do. Their physical theory precludes any idea of divine craftsmanship. As for Epicurean epistemology and ethics, both involve uses of technê consistent with Epicurean empiricism and the ethical view that pleasure or the absence of pain is the supreme good.

In the course of discussing the nature of justice in the first book of the Republic, a number of claims are made concerning the nature of technê and what it is to be skilful or to have an ability. Nawar shows how three of these claims, which do significant conceptual work in both Plato and Aristotle, can be explained and defended. The first claim, by Socrates, concerns the ‘two-way’ nature of certain skills. For instance, the person who is skilful at hitting is not only proficient at hitting well, but also proficient at avoiding being hit. The second claim, by Thrasymachus, is that the practitioner of a technê is, in a certain way, infallible and cannot fail to bring about what they intend. The third claim, made by Socrates, is that technai are not value-neutral, but rather are directed at the good of their object. Namar examines these claims, clarifies them, and attempts to explain them (so far as possible). Furthermore, he shows that these claims play an important role in Aristotle’s thought and examines how Aristotle aims to incorporate or adapt these claims in his own discussion of the modal and teleological aspects of skills and rational capacities.

How far is it possible to reconstruct the content of the ‘art of citizenship’ (politikê technê) professed by Protagoras in the dialogue Protagoras? Some commentators have claimed that Protagoras’ statements about the technê are incoherent. Examining this claim, Hussey argues that, while Protagoras can be defended on the charge of incoherence, his exposition of the nature and content of the technê he professes to possess and teach is radically incomplete in several ways. The question then arises whether the Theaetetus can be used to fill in the gaps that Protagoras of the Protagoras left for good practical reasons. If Protagoras’ remarks on truth and wisdom and the ‘changing of perceptions’ in the Theaetetus are taken in a pragmatist way, they imply a conception of a ‘technê of citizenship’ that is capable of improving/transforming human nature, and creating a public political consensus and a stable democratic society. There are many illuminating parallels to be drawn throughout, between the claims of Plato’s Protagoras for his ‘political art’ and the description of the medical art given in the pseudo-Hippocratic essay On Ancient Medicine. (It is assumed, but not argued, that Plato’s Protagoras is a substantially faithful portrait of the historical Protagoras.)