The Craft of Living as "Technical" Knowledge

Thematically, this is a follow-up to the post “Straying Afield of Oneself.”

An essential part of this blog has been a repeated reflection, metacognition of sorts, on the activity practiced in this space. There is an intentional double-meaning to “practiced” as I intend it, referring both to the “production” of content and a type of “exercise” on myself. With all proper deference, I see such a double-meaning at work, for instance, in the Ecclesiastes and Marcus Aurelius’s Meditations. These authors produce meditations, and they meditate. Thus, to see their works merely as collections of inspirational sayings is to miss the point of it all. True, there are some good thoughts to be had in there, but it is the art of inscaping, the continual immersion into those essential axioms, that unlocks their power. Sustained growth and mindfulness rather than originality of thought carry the day here.

With that as a backdrop, I thought of sharing a quote from John Sellars’ The Art of Living. Sellars notes that

in the technical conception of philosophy, philosophy is conceived as an art (techne) directed towards the cultivation of an ideal disposition of the soul, a disposition that may be called excellence (arete) or wisdom (sophia). Thus one might say that the subject matter of this art is one’s soul (psyche) and its goal (telos) is to transform or to take care of one’s soul. The product (ergon) will be the transformed disposition of the soul, namely excellence or wisdom. This transformed disposition will… necessarily impact upon an individual’s behaviour, expressing itself in their actions. Alternatively, one might say that this art is concerned with one’s life (bios), that this is its subject matter, and that its goal is to transform one’s life. Thus one might say that the product of this art will be the actions (erga) that constitute one’s life, highlighting its status as a performative art (praktike techne) in which the performance itself is the product. This product conceived as an activity may be characterized variously as a good flow of life, as living well, and as well-being or happiness (eudaimonia).*

Rather than carrying the usual connotation of “specialized,” therefore, Sellar’s concept of “technical” knowledge tracks the word techne or craft. It is a type of knowledge that amounts to an acquisition of intellectual and moral skills through exercises such as clarification, repetition, restatement, and visualization for the purpose of appropriate action and the pursuit of the good life. (The fact that Christians insist on the necessity of divine intervention and aid on all these levels does not take away from the structure of “technical” knowledge.)

With that in mind, I aspire to an act of blogging—I am looping back here to the opening paragraph—as a type of self-styling, a crafting of self in view of my core identity values: surrender, essentialism, attentiveness, life-affirmation, equanimity, self-control, integrity, mind-growth, wholeness, and love. And while I would love for people to find at least some of the content useful—what blogger wouldn’t?—there is something intrinsically valuable in such an act of written self-articulation and accountability. “Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on….”

*For the purposes of the blog post, I have taken the liberty of inserting simplified transliterations of the Greek terms. I have also left out some Greek words. Click here to see the original quote with all references intact.

The Humbling of Genuine Knowledge

The following excerpt from George Steiner's autobiography Errata about his University of Chicago student days strangely touched me. It carries the simple lesson that some of the most important insights in life are to be had only as a result of dogged persistence, humility, and willingness to be stretched.

Provided they kept mute, undergraduates were allowed to sit in advanced seminars. Enter Leo Strauss: “Ladies and gentlemen, good morning. In this class-room, the name of . . . who is, of course, strictly incomparable, will not be mentioned. We can now proceed to Plato’s Republic. Who is, of course, strictly incomparable.” I had not caught the name, but that “of course” made me feel as if a bright, cold shaft had passed through my spine. A kindly graduate student wrote down the name for me at the close of the class: one Martin Heidegger. I trotted to the library. That evening, I attempted paragraph one of Sein and Zeit. I failed to grasp even the briefest, seemingly straightforward sentence. But the vortex was spinning, that ineradicable intimation of a world new to me in depth. I vowed to try again. And again. This is the point. To direct a student’s attention towards that which, at first, exceeds his grasp, but whose compelling stature and fascination will draw him after it. Simplification, leveling, watering down, as they now prevail in all but the most privileged education, are criminal. They condescend to the capacities unbeknown within ourselves. Attacks on so-called elitism mask a vulgar condescension: towards all those judged a priori to be incapable of better things. Both thought (knowledge, Wissenschaft, imagination given form) and love ask too much of us. They humble us. But humiliation, even despair in the face of difficulty — one has sweated the night through and, still, the equation is unsolved, the Greek sentence not understood — can lighten at sun-up. In those two years at Chicago, one as an undergraduate, one in graduate-school, the mornings were prodigal.