On Technē, Justice, and Responsibility
Introduction: Removing Wisdom from the Realm of Mystery
Drawing upon transcribed and discussed notes from Oğuz Haşlakoğlu’s lecture “Socratic Wisdom: The Unity of Knowledge and Virtue,” published on the YouTube channel of the Anatolian Enlightenment Foundation, this text addresses the central thesis of Socratic thought—the inseparable unity of knowledge and virtue—within a coherent conceptual framework.
The speaker’s principal claim is that wisdom is not a mystical or inaccessible power belonging only to a select few. Its essence rests instead upon a unity available to everyone: knowledge, or logos, and virtue, or aretē, exist together as two aspects of the same reality. This unity deserves to be called wisdom only when it becomes actual not merely in thought but also in action.
Socrates’ famous statement, “The only thing I know is that I know nothing,” demonstrates that an accumulation of information is not wisdom. For Socrates, knowing is not mere possession but a measure guiding correct action.
Socratic wisdom consequently appears as the unity of theory and practice: whenever one is discussed, the other is already present.
The purpose of this article is to unfold this unity through the concepts of technē, justice, the art of politics, and human responsibility, while giving it concrete form through examples from the discussions conducted in Plato’s Politeia, or Republic.
I. The Framework of Socratic Wisdom: The Unity of Theory and Practice
For Socrates, knowledge is not a form of detached contemplation separated from action.
What is called virtue appears in conduct, while the knowledge directing conduct deserves the name “true knowledge” only when it exists together with virtue.
The decisive distinction here is between reality and truth. Reality—what exists and what is experienced—is not always identical with truth, understood as what is right.
Within an order dominated by power, what happens does not guarantee what ought to happen. Socrates separates the claim to wisdom from the legitimation of what merely exists. He locates the measure of correctness in virtue, meaning the relationship of action with justice.
Socratic wisdom is therefore measured by the ability to give form in action to what is good in itself, rather than merely contemplating it.
When knowledge is united with virtue, it gives power to the good. When virtue is united with knowledge, it ceases to be blind goodwill and acquires a stable criterion.
Once this inseparable relationship between theory and practice is dissolved, knowledge becomes a dry technique, while virtue becomes goodwill without measure. Socrates’ objection is directed precisely toward this separation.
II. Technē: Mastery, Telos, and Excellence
Socrates turns to the concept of technē in order to test the unity of knowledge and virtue.
Technē names a broad activity of production and practice exceeding modern disciplinary divisions. From carpentry and medicine to navigation and the art of politics, it emphasises the inseparability of knowledge and effective action.
The excellence of a technē is tested through the good and beneficial work produced by the person who practises it.
Goodness here is measured through usefulness—not through blind utilitarianism but through a usefulness serving human well-being.
At the centre of technē lies the idea of telos, meaning aim or purpose. When the master knows for the sake of what the work is being done, the methods demanded by the craft are applied not merely for success but also for what is right.
Excellence is achieved when the work is performed well according to its own internal measure. This excellence is not merely technical mastery but also an ethical orientation.
Through technē, Socrates establishes the connection between “good work” and “good action.” Knowledge moves toward the correct result through appropriate means, while virtue connects that result with a rightful purpose.
III. The Measure of Justice: The Response to Thrasymachus in the Politeia
One of the most striking tests of the unity between knowledge and virtue appears in the claim advanced by the sophist Thrasymachus in Plato’s Politeia: “Justice is the advantage of the stronger.”
This proposition identifies what exists, or what currently prevails, with what is right.
Under tyranny, whatever benefits the tyrant is declared just. Under democracy, whatever benefits the majority is treated as correct. Truth is thereby reduced to relations of power.
Socrates transfers the discussion to the level of politeia, the government of the city, and thus to the art of politics.
If politics is a technē, then the measure of the skilled politician must resemble that of the physician or captain.
The physician directs medical power toward the well-being of the patient. The captain directs navigational knowledge toward the safety of the crew and the security of the journey.
The politician’s measure must therefore be not the advantage of the powerful but the benefit of the weaker person—the one in need—because this is the nature of technē.
Justice in this context is not “what benefits the stronger” but “what benefits the person in need.”
Socrates thus draws a clear boundary between reality and truth. The measure of what is valid is not power but the proper purpose of the technē itself.
IV. The Politician’s Dilemma: Payment, Self-Interest, and Reluctance
After establishing the ideal principle, Socrates also points toward the dilemma arising in practice.
If politicians openly receive payment, they are called servants. If they collect the fruits of their position, they are called thieves.
A genuinely good person does not wish to undertake a difficult task benefiting others merely for personal gain. Such a person enters politics only because of the threat of being governed by someone worse.
This paradox expresses Socrates’ caution toward the mentality that transforms politics into a technique for acquiring wealth or power.
As long as politics remains a technē, it must include the duty of serving the people and therefore virtue itself.
Otherwise, the unity of knowledge and virtue dissolves, and politics is reduced to a technique of power.
V. The Common Origin of Logos and Technē: Tool, Speech, and Responsibility
Another line emphasised by the speaker concerns how logos—word, reason, and principle—carries not merely discourse but also the principle of action.
Since the first stone tools, knowledge of “how something is done” has never been merely a functional ability. It also constitutes an awareness determining the measure of conduct.
From a Socratic perspective, the claim that “science was born together with technology” means that human beings reach the threshold where knowledge becomes connected with virtue when they understand not merely the naked success of utility but the purpose for which something is useful.
The concept of responsibility emerges from this relationship.
A practitioner of technē must think together with the effects of what they produce.
Mastery does not mean only bringing something into existence. It also means assuming responsibility for its consequences.
The construction of the atomic bomb provides a frequent example. What its creators “knew” cannot be understood solely as a technical achievement. When this knowledge is separated from its purpose, it becomes ignorance in another form.
Socrates’ claim that “evil comes from ignorance” addresses precisely this rupture: knowledge may serve its own opposite when it is not connected with virtue.
VI. Ignorance as Evil: Knowledge Becomes Detached, Virtue Becomes Blind
Socrates’ proposition that “evil arises from ignorance” is not an ordinary moral lesson. It is a philosophical diagnosis of the dissolution of the unity between knowledge and virtue.
Ignorance is not merely the absence of information. It also means failing to comprehend the purpose of knowledge.
This failure accelerates when technē becomes purely technical and is reduced to instrumental achievement.
When the question “How?” is separated from “Why?”, knowledge acquires blind power and virtue loses its direction.
Socrates repeatedly returns to technē for this reason.
Mastery cannot count as success without considering its purpose. The correctness of success depends upon the correctness of its end.
VII. The Human Being as a Boundary Being: The Ethical Resolution of Self-Knowledge
Beyond the Platonic framework, the speaker points toward an important threshold through a reference to Hegel: “The human being’s knowledge that it is an animal removes it from being merely an animal.”
This paradoxical statement describes the human being as a boundary being.
Humanity is neither completely animal nor entirely something else. It exists within the tension between being animal and not being reducible to animality.
At this boundary, “knowing oneself” becomes the first movement toward assuming responsibility for one’s actions.
Responsibility is the recognition that the agent exists within the action.
In other words, it is not merely the consciousness that “I did this” but that “I am doing this, and its consequences belong to me.”
When this consciousness emerges, virtue ceases to be an external rule and becomes the person’s capacity for self-determination.
Socratic wisdom therefore defines not only the possibility of “true knowledge” but also that of a “rightly formed self.”
VIII. The Transformation of Eros: The Will to Know in Plato
Within the Platonic system, virtue does not require the suppression of desire but its correct orientation.
In this context, Eros ceases to mean merely sexual desire and becomes the desire for knowledge and truth.
The human condition as a boundary being places the individual within a state of lack and pursuit.
As the creative impulse arising from this lack, Eros opens the path through which knowledge becomes connected with virtue.
Wisdom in Plato is therefore not the death of the passions but their education.
When passion is connected with knowledge, virtue acquires direction within action.
IX. The Separation in Aristotle: Morality’s Detachment from Technique
The Socratic thesis concerning the unity of knowledge and virtue undergoes a significant separation in Aristotle.
Although Aristotle establishes a relationship between phronēsis, or practical wisdom, and aretē, or virtue, he largely situates virtue within the sphere of habit and character.
Knowledge is no longer directly inherent within virtue.
This transformation contributes to a line of thought that prepares the way for the modern reduction of technē to the exclusively technical sphere.
Morality becomes separated from technique, while technique becomes independent of its purpose.
The contemporary resonance of the Socratic warning appears here: when knowledge of action is separated from its end, knowledge can become a technique of power.
X. Gender, Aptitude, and Equality: Book V of the Politeia
The discussion of gender in Book V of the Politeia provides one of the fields in which the unity of knowledge and virtue is applied to social organisation.
Socrates argues that women and men may possess the same nature in relation to professional capacities. Given the same education, they may be suited to the same duties.
The natural difference is that women give birth while men beget children. Treating this difference as decisive in determining talent and aptitude would be contrary to nature.
Socrates therefore argues that the guardians of the city may be selected from both women and men and that both should receive musical and physical education with equal seriousness.
The logic of technē operates here.
The measure of mastery is not gender but education and aptitude appropriate to the requirements of the work.
If the art of politics is a technē, the philosopher’s wisdom—the unity of logos and virtue—rather than the philosopher’s gender must be decisive.
Socrates thereby transforms the relationship between justice and equality into an institutional proposal.
XI. Modern Reduction: Instrumental Reason and Dehumanisation
The reduction of technē to mere technique becomes explicit in the twentieth-century critique of instrumental reason.
The origin of the critique, however, lies in the Socratic diagnosis: once knowledge becomes separated from virtue, it produces a dehumanising force.
The circulation of commodities and the logic of the market damage the ethical measure connecting knowledge to its proper purpose.
Technē is reduced to the “merchant’s reason” and assessed only through the techniques of efficiency and profit.
Plato’s refusal to regard merchants as genuine practitioners of technē rests upon an awareness of precisely this separation between ends and means.
Even within fields of advanced technology today, the question “How can we make this faster, cheaper, or more effective?” frequently suppresses the questions “Why are we doing this?” and “Whom does it serve?”
Socratic wisdom recalls what has been suppressed.
Knowledge becomes a form of ignorance when it is not connected with virtue, because blindness toward purpose can transform technical success into a power available to evil.
XII. Politics, Labour, and Distribution: The Social Horizon of Justice
Within the context of the Politeia, justice is not merely an order of laws. It is the correct organisation of the distribution of labour and life.
As the city reproduces material life, it also reproduces the question of who is entitled to what.
When this question is approached according to the measure of technē, every task should be assigned to the person qualified to perform it, and every qualified person should perform the work according to the good of those who need it.
Politics is the art that institutionalises this measure.
Justice therefore becomes concrete not only within courtroom walls but also within professional education, the organisation of production, the valuation of labour, and the distribution of social roles.
As this concreteness becomes apparent in the discussion of gender equality, it is also decisive in debates concerning education and merit.
Equal access to education is a precondition for the just distribution of technē.
The unity of knowledge and virtue thereby ceases to be an abstract recommendation and becomes a demand for institutional justice.
XIII. Language, Concept, and Distinction: Truth and Reality
The conceptual knot emphasised by the speaker is the distinction between “truth” and “reality.”
Confusing these concepts legitimises the identification of truth with power.
Socrates insists that what exists or currently prevails does not determine what ought to exist.
Truth is not an appearance imposed by power. It is a measure tested through the proper purpose of technē.
Establishing conceptual clarity in language therefore purifies the moral horizon of politics.
Justice does not protect the interest of the stronger but the rightful end of technē.
XIV. Teachable Virtue: The Transformative Power of Knowledge
Within the Socratic framework, virtue can be taught because it is inherent in knowledge.
Because virtue can be learned, it cannot be left solely to the external discipline of conduct. It must be understood as an inner practice transforming the person.
At this point, the power of self-determination later emphasised by Hegel becomes relevant.
When human beings begin to know what they are, they can also determine what they will become.
This determination is virtue itself.
Virtue in this sense is not merely conduct conforming to law but the practical freedom of a reason capable of giving law to itself.
XV. Socratic Sensibility Today: An Ethics of Social Responsibility
The fundamental lesson to be learned from Socratic wisdom today is this:
When knowledge is separated from virtue, government, production, and science become blind.
When virtue is separated from knowledge, goodwill becomes ineffective.
Social responsibility begins where the two meet again.
The politician’s duty is to prevent technē from becoming a technique of power and to place it in the service of justice.
The scientist’s duty is not to abandon the ethical measure connecting knowledge with its purpose.
The citizen’s duty is to preserve the distinction between truth and reality within both language and action.
Socratic wisdom is therefore an invitation directed toward the practice of everyday life: measure in action, excellence in work, and truth in speech.
When knowledge and virtue are united, the truth of thought appears within the correctness of conduct.
When the ethical orientation is added to mastery of technē, the city can establish a form of justice appropriate to itself.
Conclusion: Direction Born from Unity
Returning to the question posed at the beginning: How can wisdom be freed from mystery?
Socrates’ answer is clear.
Knowledge must be reunited with virtue, theory with practice, and technē with telos.
The contemporary significance of the response given to Thrasymachus in the Politeia lies in the transition from the simplification that “the powerful are right” toward the consciousness that “what is right possesses power.”
The language and path of this transition are the same: placing logos within action and action under the measure of truth.
When this is achieved, wisdom does not descend from sight; sight descends into action.
Only then does knowledge truly become knowledge and virtue truly become virtue.
