In a brief volume of shorter meditations and several more extended essays, Scott H. Moore, a philosophy professor at Baylor University, uses pithy stories to illustrate the differences between techné and phronesis, the classical virtues that can be described, respectively, as “the skill to do a thing” and “practical wisdom.” As is true of most tales worth telling, the events that underlie the stories are generally full of stress when they happen. It is because of the craziness of chasing a spooked heifer through a parking lot, or trying to pick up a snake with a paint roller pole (only to end up throwing it toward his wife) that the author can in retrospect focus on the essential differences between knowing how to do something (techné) and what should be done (phronesis).
Moore’s writing is entertaining and clear. He has a narrative gift combined with the technical training of a philosopher that allows him to clearly identify and analyze premises in thinking. The book begins with a series of short meditations that essentially illustrate what the philosopher-turned-farmer doesn’t know about farming (the failures in techné). But as the book proceeds, the meditations themselves are transformed into essays that use philosophical methodology to explore the phronesis not just of farming, but of living in a society that is increasingly so enamored of techné that it is forgetting that purpose, meaning, and perhaps even survival will be determined by what to do, and not just what can be done and how to do it.
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