La techne Aristotelica: for a philosophical research on the theme "The human roots of the Ecological Crisis" in the encyclical Laudato Si'

Abstract

In the encyclical Laudato si’ the strong call to recognize "the human root of the ecological crisis", namely the cause of the "awry way of understanding human life and action", focuses on "the dominant technocratic paradigm". With this paper I intend to point out the undue transformation of technology into domination and one-dimensionality, proposing to go to the Greek roots, from whose language the words 'technology' and 'technocracy' come. The senses by which the word ‘techne’ was ordinarily used, are indeed articulated starting from the awareness of the community dimension of life, in which man can overcome his own weaknesses and lacks, developing the potentialities of each one for the common good and the plurality of the ways of actualization, on condition of acquiring knowledge by learning-teaching. In the proposal to recover the Greek notion of techne, highlighting its plural, collective and didactic character, I also qualify it as 'Aristotelian', to emphasize two provisions, given by the teachers of the first philosophical schools, Plato and then Aristotle: knowledge is said to be acquired by techne provided that from those who are able 1) to give explanations and 2) to indicate the ultimate goal, where the concepts of true, good and beautiful converge in the dimension of sophia.

Keywords: Laudato si’; techne; Aristotle; Metaphysics; theoretical sciences; common good.