Bios, Techne, and Logos - Urban Landscapes: Environmental Networks and Quality of Life - page 3

More at the heart of the human/nature relationship, we instead find the
“ cosmic pessimism ” of Giacomo Leopardi. In his Dialogue between Nature
and an Icelander , the poet no longer considers Nature as the “benign mother”
of living beings. The guilty party is no longer humans, who have voluntarily
strayed from natural laws, but Nature, which is indifferent and incapable of
procuring joy for her children. An essay by Laura Sanò stands out [5] when
expanding on this relationship. Sanò reflects on Plato's famous dialogue
Protagoras , whose principal subjects are Prometheus and Epimetheus.
Epimetheus has to distribute “natural gifts” to mortals, but on reaching
humans , he realizes he has run out of natural gifts. Prometheus intervenes and
decides to steal fire and give it to humans. Humans are therefore given the
technical skills necessary for life, but not political virtue. Sanò states that:

Techne does not pertain to humans' natural skill set, it is not an innate or
congenital presupposition, it does not reside in humans themselves; rather,
it is to be considered as an external gift, bestowed thanks to a ruse and a
divine sacrifice [5].

Techne has certainly evolved from Prometheus's gift to today, but the sense of
a “non-natural gift” remains, and serves humans to become the masters of
things and the authors of nature's transformations through efficient technolog-
ical organization linked to the development of natural science. However,
Maria Teresa Costa's hope [6], when referring to Benjamin's idea of techne , is
that it can stream from the pure pleasure of mimesis and not become an end in
itself. In such a sense, it should be capable of fertilely intersecting the
Cartesian dualism that divides reality into res cogitans and res extensa .
Techne dialogues, on the one hand, with the nonextension, awareness, and lib-
erty of the mind, and on the other with the extension, limitation, and unaware-
ness of space. It undertakes in the territory that task of the “pineal gland” that
Descartes imagined as a communication system in the human body between
the two domains. “Creative people”, the poets, and the artists referred to by
Ruffilli, may also be interested in this type of technique [2].

References

1. Severino E (2002) Téchne. Le radici della violenza. BUR Rizzoli, Milan

2. Ruffilli P (2011) Il resto dei tempi. Prisma economia. Società, lavoro. IRES Marche. n. 1, Fran-

co Angeli, Milan

3. Reale G (2006) I presocratici. Testimonianze e frammenti. Bompiani, Milano

4. Severino E (1964) Ritornare a Parmenide. Rivista di filosofia neoscolastica

5. Sanò L (2007) La scommessa di Prometeo. Fra Leopardi e Nietzsche. In: Sanò L (ed) Le poten-

ze del filosofare. Lógos, téchne, pólemos. Il Poligrafo, Padua

6. Costa M (2007) Povertà di esperienza nell'epoca della riproducibilità tecnica. In: Sanò L (ed)

Le potenze del filosofare. Lógos, téchne, pólemos. Il Poligrafo, Padua