Plato’s view of technę generally conceived commonly presupposes that it is a kind of knowledge (epistęmę), while his views on music (mousikę) particularly appear negative by comparison, even though music (viz. hę mousikę technę) is in some sense itself an art. A technę-analogy is often used to understand the nature of knowledge in Plato’s dialogues. The Platonic corpus as a whole leaves a reader with a strong impression that philosophy should reflect some salient features of technę. Plato, it would seem, regards technę as something like “applied science”.
Knut Ĺgotnes’ project will approach this question in the light of the analogy with technę and discuss the range covered by this analogy. In the Charmides this analogy is even brought into play in the discussion of self-knowledge, and the hypothesis that it could be an epistęmę of epistęmę, is set forth. Ĺgotnes will analyse the concept of self-knowledge in the Charmides and compare the treatment it is given there with relevant sections of other dialogues. The question addressed will be whether, if self-knowledge is an important part of the Socratic idea of philosophy, technę is a suitable model for philosophy at all.
In the Phaedo, Socrates seems to moderate this ambition for a techne-like philosophy, insofar as he is depicted engaged in poetry, in mousikę. But he also says that philosophy is the highest form of music. This leaves us with a profound ambiguity. Does he mean that philosophy as a technę-like episteme should be accepted as the true mousikę, or that philosophy should be a new composite genre composed of both epistemic and poetical elements? Or does he mean that it should consist in something based on, but transcending, both these?
The aim of Kristin Sampson’s project is to investigate the relation between music and philosophy in Plato, with a view to the ambiguity that surrounds mousikę, and in consideration of the particular kind of poięsis that music represents, compared to, and contrasted with, the more figurative imagery. One of the hypotheses that the project will explore is that the musical and the figurative are placed differently in relation to the notion of movement that is contained in the concept of kinesis. The classical Greek concept of music - mousikę - or, as it also called, mousikę technę, is an extensive concept, related to the arts of the muses. Mousikę does not include all art and all craft that in Antiquity could be named as creative poięsis or art, but differs from the plastic or mechanical arts that both are placed beyond the domain of the muses. However, mousikę embraces song, dance and what we would term “music”, in addition to myths, tales and poetry. Plato’s views on art and music are commonly portrayed as negative. The aim of the present project is to also take into consideration some of the other and quite different statements on music that can be found in the Platonic text corpus, in order to present a more complex and ambiguous image of Plato on this point. For instance, Plato talks of music in relation to the activity of the soul called philosophy, calling it the highest form of music. Sampson’s project will consider the possibility that perhaps it is a concurrence between the musicality of philosophy as well as the philosophical quality of the highest form of music we are invited to listen to in Plato’s dialogues with their abundance of poetical elements.
Ellen Mortensen will analyse the relationship between art, technology and truth in Martin Heidegger’s reading of Plato. One of his basic assumptions is that in Plato, the three terms poięsis, technę and alętheia belonged together in Plato, and it is through the later appropriations of Plato’s texts by the Romans and later, by German idealists like Kant and Hegel, that there has come about a radical separation between the three terms. In this project, I will investigate Heidegger’s reading of Plato in works as different at ”Plato’s Doctrine of Truth” in Pathways, his “The Origin of the Work of Art” in The Origin of the Work of Art and Other Essays as well as “The Question Concerning Technology” from The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. By working through the Platonic texts with Heidegger, The Republic, as well as a number of the dialogues, Mortensen will explore Heidegger’s notion of poetic thinking, which emerges precisely in the crossing between these three terms, a thinking which he claims undermines all of Western metaphysics and its traditional demarcations between art (aesthetics), technology (science) and truth (epistemology).