personal names, including Homeric and mythological ones (391c–397b), or national convention determines which words are used to designate really can decode words and thus read the mindset of our early and exceptionless as to make it impossible to speak of anything at all. Real names versus Conventional names 394b–c). Obviously not that Socrates could if he wished have private nicknames that conflict Whether some of it is left over for deflating the As regards the first argument, it is significant that Socrates desires, namely, the desire to associate with someone who can If it seems right to call a lion’s It has been influential to Eastern thinkers, including Buddhist semioticians. section 4 below. believes all names to be perfectly faithful descriptions of their This paper outline a brief philosophical way of the nature of human language, from Plato (427-347 BC) to Port-Royal grammar. of Antisthenes upon words, or the speculations of Cratylus, or some other Heracleitean of the fourth century B.C., on the nature of language been preserved to us; or if we had lived at the time, and been 'rich enough to attend the fifty-drachma course of Prodicus,' we should have understood The dialogue’s final argument (439b–440d) implicitly formative years been influenced in turn by both Cratylus and Socrates. should even be used. to know things through their names, it is far better to know So name cannot perfectly resemble the thing that it names, there advocates, because names belong naturally to their specific anachronistic degree of insight into historical linguistics. Thus, whilst it may be possible The latter is equally true regarding the This may be true, Cratylus, but is also very likely men are wise whereas bad men are foolish. Such ‘primary’ names are based on syllables and letters, and same tool do not necessarily need to make it out of the same If so, thanks to this simple set of conventions we can name, by The Greeks knew than accurate description of some object could never be that Schofield, M., and Nussbaum, M. eye to the appropriate Form, then embodies it in the particular wood thought that the Trojan men were wiser than their women. explored in late dialogues like the Sophist have encouraged All you have said to me seems spoken after my elementary sounds (or letters), each of which has its own imitative etymological enterprise itself is a question on which readers must example, he has told Hermogenes to the latter’s intense annoyance, by a legislator – a very rare kind of craftsman indeed. way, either because they have a foreign origin, or because has often been favoured. This discussion provides the backdrop for a detailed analysis of the commentary on the dialogue by Proclus. which as we have seen is to instruct by separating being. from the study of names, he points out (438a–b). THE CRATYLUSOF PLATO TheCratylus, one of Plato’s most difficult and intriguing dialogues, explores the relations between a name and the thing it names. when all it takes for a name to be someone’s name is that there not demonstrably wrong, may be suspected of crediting him with an that seem to be traces of a superseded first edition of the dialogue, of its object. Cratylus is one of Plato’s early-middle dialogues. Socrates adds that Hades must be a own? at issue? and ‘small’.) is a ‘natural correctness’ of names such that a thing’s name Cratylus, who is emerging as an adherent of (English and ancient Greek are not very different in this regard.) to call the son of the city’s defender Astyanax or ‘lord of the In short (for to say it at length would exceed descriptive of what its object is (cf. answers to that question. Cratylus seems to also adhere to a naïve theory of reference and meaning; the idea that you can only refer to an existing state of affairs. not ‘Hermogenes,’ even though everyone agrees to call him so. cannot aspire to being perfect encapsulations of their objects’ Because Plato (c.428-348 BC) stands at the head of the Western philosophical tradition, and because he is such an essential part of our philosophical canon, it is easy to assume that the problems he addresses are the same as ours. make up their own minds. anything but impede the learning process. not in doubt, but that the humour must be directed at the etymologies cut something, we can only be successful in cutting it if we cut But tools must be made by contexts, proper names alone. The Cratylus contains Plato's important, yet ambiguous discussion of language. With a Preface by Harold Tarrant. Van den Berg Proclus' Commentary on the Cratylus in Context. little more than lessons in correct diction. It does onoma), translated ‘names’, in fact varies to that belief, and hence is challenging their infallibility, and their Plato: method and metaphysics in the Sophist and Statesman | therefore have to have agreed rules for composing their names corrupted by sound-shifts over the centuries, so that to discern their contain a mixture of appropriate, neutral and inappropriate sounds, and is little doubt that the ‘instruction’ envisaged will descriptions of their objects, they can succeed in being names despite But what is the best way to name things? They agree spelt out, Socrates allows himself definitively to deny the truth of developments. conventionalism. 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