The limits of techne and the virtue of dialogue according to Plato

This article starts by recognizing the protective nature of techne and its development. It is thereby possible to understand the limits of techne based on the Socratic question of virtue. Virtue, insofar as it is not a matter analogous to the objects of techne, requires a special access. The communitarian sense and the character of the Socratic inquiry are made plain, given dialogue as the only way of knowing virtue. Socratic dialogue discloses that virtue is never technically closed or epistemically conceptualized, but that this greatest human good is fulfilled through the joint examination of life itself.