ΚΡΑΤΥΛΟΣ
Benjamin Jowett
Plato · Benjamin Jowett
Scene: no dramatic setting
The Cratylus debates whether the correctness of names is natural — words somehow fitting the things they name — or merely a matter of human convention (the nature-versus-custom question applied to language). Socrates spins out a dizzying series of etymologies, deriving the names of gods and concepts from their supposed meanings.
Behind the wordplay lies a serious point: names are tools that image reality, but they are unreliable guides to it, and knowledge must finally rest not on words but on the Forms themselves.
The Platonic dialogue on the correctness of names sets the view that names belong to things by nature against the view that they hold only by convention. Socrates, examining a long series of etymologies, suggests that names may image the things they name — yet warns that one cannot learn the truth of things from names alone, but must study the things themselves.
For the later Platonists the dialogue was a charter for the philosophical reading of the divine names, and its play of etymologies fed directly into the Neoplatonic theology of the gods.
From the Plato Scroll Encyclopedia · open this entry in the reader
Hermogenes: Suppose that we make Socrates a party to the argument?
Cratylus: If you please.
Hermogenes: I should explain to you, Socrates, that our friend Cratylus has been arguing about names; he says that they are natural and not conventional; not a portion of the human voice which men agree to use; but that there is a truth or correctness in them, which is the same for Hellenes as for barbarians. Whereupon I ask him, whether his own name of Cratylus is a true name or not, and he answers ‘Yes.’ And Socrates? ‘Yes.’ Then every man’s name, as I tell him, is that which he is called. To this he replies— ‘If all the world were to call you Hermogenes, that would not be your name.’ And when I am anxious to have a further explanation he is ironical and mysterious, and seems to imply that he has a notion of his own about the matter, if he would only tell, and could entirely convince me, if he chose to be intelligible. Tell me, Socrates, what this oracle means; or rather tell me, if you will be so good, what is your own view of the truth or correctness of names, which I would far sooner hear.
Socrates: Son of Hipponicus, there is an ancient saying, that ‘hard is the knowledge of the good.’ And the knowledge of names is a great part of knowledge. If I had not been poor, I might have heard the fifty-drachma course of the great Prodicus, which is a complete education in grammar and language — these are his own words — and then I should have been at once able to answer your question about the correctness of names. But, indeed, I have only heard the single-drachma course, and therefore, I do not know the truth about such matters; I will, however, gladly assist you and Cratylus in the investigation of them. When he declares that your name is not really Hermogenes, I suspect that he is only making fun of you; — he means to say that you are no true son of Hermes, because you are always looking after a fortune and never in luck. But, as I was saying, there is a good deal of difficulty in this sort of knowledge, and therefore we had better leave the question open until we have heard both sides.
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The Athenian who turned Socratic conversation into a written philosophy and founded the Academy.
Plato was born around 428 BCE into a wealthy and politically prominent Athenian family; through his mother Perictione the family traced kinship to the lawgiver Solon, and his relatives Critias and Charmides were among the oligarchs of the Thirty. A late tradition says his given name was Aristocles and that 'Plato' — from the word for 'broad' — was a nickname. He grew up during the long agony of the Peloponnesian War and came of age amid the violence and disillusion that followed Athens' defeat.
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