Volume 42, Issue 2, Fall 2022
Emily Hulme
Pages 443-451
Is Farming a Technē?
Folk Concepts in Plato and Aristotle
Plato and Aristotle both grant and deny the status of techne to farming. How can we resolve this apparent inconsistency? The answer is by construing techne as a folk concept and farming as a marginal member of this category: farming is a techne in the sense of a specialized, rational practice, but it is a non-central case of techne because it is tied to the land and involves work outdoors.