Abstract

ONE OF THE PECULIARITIES of philosophy is that every attempt to isolate a particular philosophical question, a question about the most familiar aspect of our daily experience, is transformed, the moment we begin to reflect carefully about the meaning of that question, into the universal problem of the nature of philosophy itself. The decision, for example, to concentrate our attention upon the analysis of the "logic" of ordinary linguistic usage, depends, if it is truly philosophical, upon prior decisions concerning the meanings of "logic" and "ordinary," upon a decision concerning a "criterion of significance" or the decision process itself: upon the "meaning of meaning." We cannot ask a philosophical question unless philosophy is already present as a response to the fundamental or universal questions underlying every particular question. Of course, as members of an established philosophical movement, we may beg these universal questions by assuming them to have already been answered, but the moment we do this, we cease to be philosophers, and become technicians instead. Technë is not in itself philosophical, but is an instrument of philosophy; as an instrument, it may be employed by mutually contradictory philosophies, and its significance depends upon the end toward which it is applied. More specifically, a technë is a way of doing, and so there are as many technai as there are ways of doing. In each case, a technë is a skill in doing something which one has previously decided to do, on grounds other than the technë itself. If we decide to do something merely because we are able to do it, then we may be successful, but we shall not be philosophers. In such a case, philosophy is present only when the significance of success is questioned.