ABSTRACT
Aristotle divides knowledge into three main sorts: theoretical, productive and practical wisdom.1 The distinction, particularly that between theoretical and practical, has become so familiar to us that it is easy to forget that this was once a classificatory innovation. We are less accustomed, however, to thinking of productive knowledge as a distinct genre alongside the other two. We tend to treat productive knowledge as a species of practical knowledge. The aim of this chapter is to show how Aristotle arrives at the view of craft as a distinct kind of knowledge and to highlight some of the difficulties pursuant to this taxonomy. I shall begin by offering a general outline of Aristotle’s account of craft in Book VI within the classification of knowledge in the Nicomachean Ethics (EN), and I shall then analyse Aristotle’s definition of technê before homing in on the contrast then between technê and practical knowledge or phronêsis. For it is this contrast which is likely to strike us not just as most distinctive of Aristotle’s response to Plato, but also as most philosophically problematic.
