Plato: Cratylus

El presente artículo contiene una lectura cruzada del Fedro y el Crátilo en la que se aclaran algunos de sus ejes temáticos centrales con el fin de sacar a relucir las constantes del pensamiento platónico que ambos diálogos comparten. La descripción de la dialéctica presente en el Fedro encaja con una definición socrática del Crátilo que explicita que el nombre es un instrumento al servicio del dialéctico. Todo ello nos lleva a concluir que la técnica dialéctica, además de constituir el (...) principal mecanismo regulador de la oratoria, se postula en los diálogos platónicos como un procedimiento de corrección que permite validar cualquier tipo de proposición y aproximar a la verdad los más variados discursos y representaciones de la realidad. Abstract: The current paper contains a comparative reading of the Phaedrus and the Cratylus. Some of their central topics are here contrasted in order to highlight the characteristic traits of Platonic thought present in both dialogues. The description of dialectic in the Phaedrus fits well with a Socratic definition in the Cratylus which clearly specifies that names are tools at the service of the dialectician. This evidence leads us to the conclusion that -besides being the main mechanism to control and judge rhetoric- dialectical technic appears in the dialogues as the only correcting procedure that makes it possible to verify any sort of proposition and bring speeches and depictions of reality closer to the truth. (shrink)

Through a study of nature and paternal power, this paper sheds light on the neglected theme of the relation between language and justice in Plato’s Cratylus. The dialogue inquires after the correctness of names, and it turns out that no lineage leads us back to a natural ground of names. Every lineage breaks; nature is always disrupted by the monstrous. It does not follow, however, that names are mere conventions without significance: on the contrary, naming is best understood as a (...) prayer to and for the just. The Cratylus reveals the insufficiency of language not to lead us to despair but to call us to the humility and the hope in which we must pray for justice. (shrink)

El presente artículo defiende que Platón bromea cuando su Sócrates afirma estar inspirado o bajo posesión divina en Fedro 238d y Crátilo 396d. Para ello, primero se sitúan en contexto ambos pasajes; a continuación, se muestra que a lo largo de todo el corpus Platón contrapone el conocimiento y el arte (τέχνη) al falso saber y a la inspiración (ἐνθουσιασμός); en tercer y cuarto lugar respectivamente, leemos los pasajes en cuestión en función de esta contraposición, para mostrar que hay que (...) desconfiar de cuanto dice Sócrates cuando burlonamente afirma estar inspirado. (shrink)

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The purpose of the paper is to discuss Aristotle’s account of homonymy. The major thesis advocated here is that Aristotle considers both entities and words to be homonymous, depending on the object of his criticism. Thus, when he takes issue with Plato, he tends to view homonymy more ontologically, upon which it is entities that become homonymous. When, on the other hand, he gainsays the exegetes or the sophists, he is inclined to perceive homonymy more semantically, upon which it is (...) words that become homonymous. Subsequently, this article shows that Aristotle values homonymy negatively in dialectical discussions, but positively in rhetorical and poetic arts. Finally, the present paper demonstrates that Aristotle regards systematic homonymy as a very useful theoretical tool that makes it possible to critically examine the basic terminological assumptions of any philosophical inquiry. (shrink)

I discuss a textual problem at Cratylus 393bc and, after establishing the correct text, argue that the MSS readings point to the existence of a textual variant in the margin of an ancestor of the common source of our MSS, presumably an ancient edition of the dialogue. Then I make the further hypothesis that both readings originated as alternative attempts to interpret Plato's ambiguous orthography.

Plato’s dialogue Cratylus focuses on being and human dependence on words, or the essential truths about the human condition. Arguing that comedy is an essential part of Plato's concept of language, S. Montgomery Ewegen asserts that understanding the comedic is key to an understanding of Plato's deeper philosophical intentions. Ewegen shows how Plato’s view of language is bound to comedy through words and how, for Plato, philosophy has much in common with playfulness and the ridiculous. By tying words, language, and (...) our often uneasy relationship with them to comedy, Ewegen frames a new reading of this notable Platonic dialogue. (shrink)

I know of nothing that has caused me to dream more on Plato’s secrecy and his sphinx nature than the happily preserved petit fait that under the pillow of his deathbed there was found no “Bible,” nothing Egyptian, Pythagorean, or Platonic—but a volume of Aristophanes. How could even a Plato have endured life—a Greek life to which he said No—without an Aristophanes? Diogenes Laertius reports that Plato was reputed to have been so “well regulated”(kosmiois) as never once to have been (...) seen to “laugh excessively” (gelôn huperagan . . . kômikôn).1 Nietzsche describes Plato as so humorless as to be positively “boring” (1968, 117). John Sallis not only ascribes to this notoriously solemn philosopher a sense of .. (shrink)

In this article I investigate what the Stoic doctrine of the two principles, God and matter, owes to Plato. I discuss recent scholarly views to the effect that the Stoics were influenced by Old Academic interpretations of the Timaeus and argue that, although the Timaeus probably did play a role in the genesis of the Stoic doctrine, some role was also played by a dualist theory of flux set forth in the etymologies of the Cratylus. I also discuss Theophrastus’ account (...) of Plato’s achievements in physics (fr. 230 FHS&G) and the report of Old Academic physics contained in Cicero’s Academica, 1. 24–9, and commonly taken to go back to Antiochus of Ascalon, and I show that those reports too are likely to have been influenced by the Cratylus. (shrink)

For Plato, the crucial function of human cognition is to grasp truths. Explaining how we are able to do this is fundamental to understanding our cognitive powers. Plato addresses this topic from several different angles. In the Cratylus and Theaetetus, he attempts to identify the elemental cognitions that are the foundations of language and knowledge. He considers several candidates for this role, most notably, perception and simple meaning-bearing concepts. In the first section, we will look at Plato’s worries about semantic (...) instability and its epistemic consequences. The central role of basic cognitions in Plato’s account of knowledge in the Theaetetus will be explored in the second section. In the final section, the relevance of Plato’s conception of cognition to modern discussions in the philosophy of language and epistemology will be noted. (shrink)

The first full-scale commentary on the Cratylus, one of Plato's most difficult and intriguing dialogues.

At Cratylus 385b–c, Plato appears to argue that names have truth-value. Critics have almost universally condemned the argument as fallacious. Their case has proven so compelling that it has driven editors to recommend moving or removing the argument from its received position in the manuscripts. I argue that a close reading of the argument reveals it commits no fallacy, and its purpose in the dialogue justifies its original position. I wish to vindicate the manuscript tradition, showing that the argument establishes (...) that there is subject matter for investigation, and there is a correctness of names. (shrink)

Near the beginning of the Cratylus (385e-387d) Plato's Socrates argues, against his friend Hermogenes, that the standards of correctness for our use of names in speech are in no way up to us. Yet this conclusion should strike us, at least initially, as bizarre. After all, how could it not be up to us whether to call our children by the names of our parents, or whether to call dogs “dogs“? My aim in this paper will be to show that, (...) although Plato's argument does not succeed in establishing this apparently bizarre conclusion, it may well succeed in establishing an equally momentous conclusion: that the standards of correctness for our use of concepts in thought are in no way up to us. (shrink)

This paper is about an aspect of philosophic life, showing, in the case of one Platonic dialogue in particular, that the texts that later Platonists employed in a quasi-scriptural capacity could influence their lives in important ways. The Cratylus was seen as addressing the question of how names could be regarded as 'correct', raising the role of the name-giver to the level of the law-giver. It begins with the question of how a personal name could be correct. The ancient text (...) that offers us most evidence of the philosophic manipulation of proper names is Porphyry's Life of Plotinus, which makes it quite clear that the revision of individuals' names, and in particular the giving of a Greek name to those of non-Greek origins, had become a regular practice. The name, it seems, was intended to capture something of the actual nature of the individual in question. There is evidence that the practice goes back to the age of Lucian, and specifically to the circle of Numenius, whose own name is also that of a bird. His religious dialogue Hoopoe suggests that there was something special in bird-names; Lucian's Gallus reincarnates Pythagoras as a bird, while his Death of Peregrinus has the eponymous sham philosopher ultimately adopting a bird-name too. Curiously, the final name that Porphyry bears also closely recalls the name of a bird. This may be explained as the apt naming of one who rose to the highest philosophic vision in accordance with the 'flight of the mind' passage in Plato's Phaedrus. (shrink)

Ideas in and problems of the philosophy of language surface frequently in Plato's dialogues. This forms the basis of the present article. Some passages briefly formulate, or presuppose, views about names, signification, truth, or falsehood; others are extended discussions of important themes of the philosophy of language. Basic predicative expressions are an integral part of Plato's philosophy of language. The article further emphasizes on the importance of forms as missing standards. Plato does say that perceptible particulars derive their names from (...) the forms they partake of. (shrink)

This paper offers an interpretation of Plato's Cratylus 427d1-431c3 that supports a reading of the dialogue as a whole as concluding in favour of a conventionalist account of naming. While many previous interpretations note the value of this passage as evidence for Platonic investigations of false propositions, this paper argues that its demonstration that there can be false (or incorrect) naming in turn refutes the naturalist account of naming; that is, it shows that a natural relation between name and nominatum (...) is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for reference. Socrates secures this outcome by using demonstratives and their concomitants to show how any putative natural imitative link between name and object may be overridden. Furthermore, Socrates' employment of demonstratives and context-dependent statements in his case-studies of false naming speaks in favour of a reading of this passage as primarily focussing on naming rather than on propositions in general. (shrink)

The interlocutors of Plato’s Cratylus agree that “it is far better to learn and to inquire from the things themselves than from their names”. Although surprisingly little attention has been paid to these remarks, at least some commentators view Plato as articulating a preference for direct, nonlinguistic cognitive access to the objects of inquiry. Another commentator takes Plato simply to recommend first-hand, yet linguistic, experience in addition to instruction from experts. This paper defends, in contrast to both interpretations, the view (...) that inquiry without names is dialectical, linguistic inquiry into metaphysical first principles. As such, inquiry without names is prior to inquiry from or through names. Inquiry without names is a form of transcendental metaphysics. (shrink)

This book explores the various views on language and its relation to philosophy in the Platonic tradition by examening the reception of Plato’s Cratylus in antiquity in general, and the commentary of the Neoplatonist Proclus in particular.

Heraclitean flux plays a large role in Plato 's « Theaetetus » and « Cratylus ». Yet Heraclitus himself did not hold the same conception of flux. The question of how the two thinkers differ, and why Plato treats Heraclitus as he does, is significant because the notion of flux has figured in subsequent philosophical conceptions of the persistence of identity through change. Comparison of Heraclitus, frr. B 12 and B 125 DK reveals that flux is not motion simply, but (...) motion productive of stability ; the unity of stability and flux is the « unapparent connection » that it is Heraclitus ' mission to reveal. Analysis of Tht. 179 C-181 B and Cra. 402 A 3-8 and 411 B-C shows neither any exegesis of Heraclitus ' words, nor any evidence that Plato has in mind any historical Heracliteans. The playful way in which Plato handles Heracliteanism, with comic and hyperbolic imagery, suggests that his audience would have recognized Heraclitean flux as a familiar theory from the context of contemporary oral dialectic. (shrink)

Proclus' commentary on Plato's Cratylus is the only ancient commentary on this work to have come down to us, and is illuminating in two special ways. First, it is actually the work of two Neoplatonists. The majority of the material is supplied by the Athenian-based Proclus, who is well known for his magisterial commentaries on Plato's Timaeus and Parmenides, as well as for a host of other works involving the study of Plato. This material we have consists of excerpts from (...) Proclus' commentary edited by another figure who appears to be a Platonist working somewhat later in Alexandria. Consequently it contains insights into the philosophy of both of the principal late antique centers of Platonism, Athens and Alexandria. Secondly, the material is divided between the grittier issues of language-theory, on which it engages freely with other ancient philosophies, and theological discussion mostly involved with the etymologies of the names of Greek gods, in which Proclus is more concerned to relate his own brand of Platonism to the 'Orphic' and 'Chaldaean' theological systems, and also to Homer. Brian Duvick's extensive notes bring out all these facets of the ancient text. (shrink)

In the Cratylus, Socrates seems to present the logos essentially as an always already present yoke binding us to our world. However, this prior and necessary bond does not entail that the world is revealed perfectly and completely in the terms and structures of our human language. Rather, within this bond, the logos opens up a distance between being and appearance, insofar as it points to ›what is‹ as the withdrawn possibility condition for the appearances ordered, gathered and separated according (...) to names. Plato presents the essential ambivalence of logos not only in Socrates’ elenctic arguments, but also in the etymology of Hermes, where the possession of language is a cryptic message indicating to humans a divine wisdom. Thus, as essentially the recipient of such a message, as having been called toward being by the gods, the proper, indeed pious, human response is dialectical question and answer, Socratic searching and investigating together. (shrink)

The Cratylus contains Plato's most extensive study of the relation of language to reality and to the pursuit of wisdom. Yet the dialogue has remained relatively neglected in efforts to understand Plato's deepest metaphysical and epistemological commitments. The blame for such neglect lies largely in the dialogue's extensive, difficult, even mysterious etymological section. Recent attempts to make sense of the bulk of the Cratylus are shedding much welcome light on the important roles that the etymological analyses play in the dialogue (...) and in Plato's philosophy more generally. The article outlines three strategies of interpretation before concluding with the author's own proposal. (shrink)

On the face of it, Plato’s dialogue the Cratylus has a clear and narrowly linguistic subject matter, specifically, the debate between conventionalism and naturalism in the theory of meaning. But why should this topic be of sufficient interest to Plato to warrant an entire dialogue? What philosophically was at stake for him in these seemingly recherché questions about language? I argue that at least one major motivation is a defense of Platonistic epistemology and, in particular, Plato’s Theory of Recollection. Specifically, (...) I argue that conventionalism and naturalism pose alternative responses to a certain version of the paradox of analysis. If either is correct, Plato’s own solution to the paradox – the Theory of Recollection – will not be adequately motivated. If, however, neither conventionalism nor naturalism can plausibly avoid the paradox, the Theory of Recollection will still be needed. (shrink)

This book explains how the Cratylus, Plato's apparently meandering and comical dialogue on the correctness of names, makes serious philosophical progress by its notorious etymological digressions. While still a wild ride through a Heraclitean flood of etymologies which threatens to swamp language altogether, the Cratylus emerges as an astonishingly organized evaluation of the power of words.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Plato’s CratylusRosamond Kent SpragueDavid Sedley. Plato’s Cratylus. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Pp. xi + 190. Cloth, $60.00Discussion of Plato's Cratylus, to which this book is a notable contribution, must straightway come to terms with the question of Plato's seriousness (or lack thereof) in the etymology sections of the dialogue. Professor Sedley is a strong advocate of the seriousness of the etymologies, a position which, he remarks, (...) will not surprise most classicists, although it "may cause apoplexy among many of Plato's philosophical admirers" (23). More colloquially he writes, "if Plato was joking, the joke flopped" (39).But need we assume that Plato was either serious or joking? His sense of humor was peculiar, and seems to me nicely characterized by Guthrie when, in commenting on the present dialogue, he speaks of Plato as "tumbling together with an equally straight face absurdities and deeply held convictions" (History V, 25). I also incline more than Sedley to the frequent topicality of Plato's work.Nevertheless, the Sedley thesis may be seen to pay rich rewards. Perhaps most notable is the perception that the etymologies constitute a philosophical curriculum, moving along a well-defined trace from cosmology to the consideration (a watershed here) of ethical terms. This progression is especially significant in marking the emancipation of Plato from his early association with Cratylus and his subsequent allegiance to Socrates.Another mandatory topic is, of course, chronology. The Cratylus is seen to be unusual here in that what we have is most probably a reedited version. (A substantive point is at issue because the earlier version fails to distinguish clearly between the lawmaker and the [End Page 490] dialectician.) Thus to the question, where does the Cratylus fit in the traditional chronology, Sedley's answer is, "not in any one place" (7). As to the projected time of the revision, proximity to the Sophist is most likely.Sedley's general approach to the etymologies is hierarchical (here he identifies two important principles, Uniformity and Groundedness) rather than one of mutual support. He writes that the "'imitation' relation between sounds and things will be found [at] not just the primary level, but all the way up the chain" (126). Similarly with Socrates' painting analogy: "the primary pigments which the painter uses already imitate the simplest objects of vision" (128). In both cases the principles of Uniformity and Groundedness "are to some extent permitted to merge" (127).The business of name-making is of course a techne, as is that of painting. That both of these arts are approximate in nature is not an "ad hoc postulate [but] lies at the heart of Platonic metaphysics," since "any craftsman's embodiment of a Form in matter is necessarily less than perfect" (45). (As Sedley tellingly points out, "it is the Sophist Thrasymachus, and not Socrates, who proposes that a craftsman, qua craftsman, never gets anything wrong" [44].) As for Socrates' final position, it is "not the reversion to conventionalism that it has so often been taken to be" (145). Convention does play some part in signification, but it is also the case that names are some kind of vocal imitations, "a thesis, massively documented in the etymological section, from which Socrates never retreats" (145).One point on which I would like to have had Sedley's comments is the following: what does he think of Diogenes Laertius's remark (III, 6) that not only did Plato, after the death of Socrates, "attach himself to Cratylus the Heraclitean," but also to Hermogenes "who professed the philosophy of Parmenides"? Now the only real Parmenideanism in the dialogue (the position that a name is either a true name or not a name at all) is attributed not to Hermogenes but to Cratylus! (Is Descartes an empiricist? Is Hume a rationalist?) Furthermore, even though Cratylus adopts this position on a variety of occasions (429d, 432a, 433c, 436c, and 438c), he is too flighty (or, one might say, too fluxy) to stick with it, and continually relapses (431a, 432d, 433b, 435e, for instance). At the risk of being categorized as a non-serious reader of the Cratylus (which I am not... (shrink)

Plato's Cratylus is a brilliant but enigmatic dialogue. It bears on a topic, the relation of language to knowledge, which has never ceased to be of central philosophical importance, but tackles it in ways which at times look alien to us. In this reappraisal of the dialogue, Professor Sedley argues that the etymologies which take up well over half of it are not an embarrassing lapse or semi-private joke on Plato's part. On the contrary, if taken seriously as they should (...) be, they are the key to understanding both the dialogue itself and Plato's linguistic philosophy more broadly. The book's main argument is so formulated as to be intelligible to readers with no knowledge of Greek, and will have a significant impact both on the study of Plato and on the history of linguistic thought. (shrink)

In this dissertation, I offer a narrative reading of the Cratylus , which separates it from debates about language, and instead, by focusing on the dynamics of the interactions of the characters, discovers in it a portrait of Socrates' interaction with two men with very different reactions to the new and radical teachings of the philosophers and sophists. Socrates appeals to Hermogenes, who is immersed in the conventional aristocratic life, with a fantastic promise of an impossible art of names, and (...) uses it in order to rhetorically encourage his interest in philosophy by giving it the praise of the gods and the ancients and by proving that it does not have to abandon the values of the city. Cratylus has already embraced this new teaching with an uncritical dogmatism. Where Socrates offers illusory promises to woo Hermogenes to these new teachings, he encourages doubt and re-examination for Cratylus. Cratylus has abandoned the city and with it the mortal life in an attempt to live entirely theoretically and divinely. Between the two of them, they illustrate the two perpetual obstacles to philosophical growth for human beings. Entirely immersed in what is immediately around us, we are unable to see beyond these things; but once we discover the need and the pleasure of the transcendent, we forget our actual state and pursue these new ideas in a way which lacks the grounding and definition that human life requires---a saving regulation that is only found by staying immersed in the practical world and in community. As a mixture of body and soul, human beings are caught between these two worlds, a duality which is mirrored in the mixture of being and non-being, truth and falsehood in the world, and in the puzzling status of names: always pointing to something else than what they are, something not found in any of the sensible material that actually makes them up. They surround us, linked always to the things that they name, but never being all of these things named which are never present. (shrink)