both the craftsman and the artist technitēs. In accordance with the later "technical" use of the word τέχνη, where it designates (in a way utterly foreign to the Greeks) a mode of production, we seek even in the original and genuine significance of the word such later content: we aver that τέχνη means hand manufacture. But because what we call fine art is also designated by the Greeks as τέχνη, we believe that this implies a glorification of handicraft, or else that the exercise of art is degraded to the level of a handicraft.
However illuminating the common belief may be, it is not adequate to the actual state of affairs; that is to say, it does not penetrate to the basic position from which the Greeks define art and the work of art. But this will become clear when we examine the fundamental word τέχνη. In order to catch hold of its true significance, it is advisable to establish the concept that properly counters it. The latter is named in the word φύσις. We translate it with "nature," and think little enough about it. For the Greeks, φύσις is the first and the essential name for beings themselves and as a whole. For them the being is what flourishes on its own, in no way compelled, what rises and comes forward, and what goes back into itself and passes away. It is the rule that rises and resides in itself.
If man tries to win a foothold and establish himself among the beings (φύσις) to which he is exposed, if he proceeds to master beings in this or that way, then his advance against beings is borne and guided by a knowledge of them. Such knowledge is called τέχνη. From the very outset the word is not, and never is, the designation of a "making" and a producing; rather, it designates that knowledge which supports and conducts every human irruption into the midst of beings. For that reason τέχνη is often the word for human knowledge without qualification. The kind of knowledge that guides and grounds confrontation with and mastery over beings, in which new and other beings are expressly produced and generated in addition to and on the basis of the beings that have already come to be (φύσις ), in other words, the kind of knowledge that produces utensils and works of art, is then specially designated by the word τέχνη. But even here, τέχνη never means making or manufacturing as such; it always means knowledge, the