It is a difficult work, but I really enjoyed reading it.

During my investigation of the rule-following section of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigation, I came across one paper by Paul Livingston saying that Plato's Cratylus anticipates the Wittgensteinian discussion. Of course, there is a difference between an earlier work anticipating another later work in philosopher, and an earlier work being relevant to the contemporary discussion. I picked up this book and realised that there are indeed many insights to be gained from this.

Cratylus is a dialogue, in the contemporary reading, concerning naturalism/conventionalism in naming (and rule-setting, terms are used interchangeably). Socrates strove to a picture somewhat in between, that there might be a naturalistic process in the initial naming, but the subsequent practice of using the name is largely a convention. This is, in my reading, a more sophisticated picture than the community view of rule-following by some philosophers on Wittgenstein. I believe Cratylus and PI are two works on the same phenomenon but having different directions of investigation. Cratylus concerns with the correctness (or normativity, a fancier term) of naming, while PI concerns with (I think) how people follow rules and implying normativity of meaning.

This isn't one of the more popular Socratic dialogues because its subject matter seems so antiquated and irrelevant. (I've learned that some of the dialogues are read to learn things, and others are read to understand what humanity had to go through to get to our present level of knowlege -- and how we, too, may be stuck in some in proper ways of thinking.) The dialogue's central question is whether the way things are named is merely by convention (we all agree to call things and people by certain names) or whether there is some quality that makes a name proper.

Socrates talks the question out with Cratylus (believes names are by nature) and Hermogenes (believes names are by convention.) Socrates somewhat walks the tightrope, agreeing with Cratylus, but acknowledging that some things, people, and gods don't seem to be named well, and - yet - everyone still calls them by those names. The most important idea in the whole dialogue is that one shouldn't assume one has some grasp of a thing because one knows what it is called.

There wasn't as much philosophy as I would've expected here, and it seemed that most of the dialogue was etymology in prose. I'm sure a lot of the impact is lost through translation, and the poor translator kept having to provide transliterations. I found it a little interesting at just how many words Socrates was able to find a meaningful root for, especially the names of the gods, and I wondered how many of his educated guesses were actually right. I was even surprised when he was finally stumped placing the blame naturally enough on the likelihood that the word was of foreign extraction.

A thread of philosophy still runs through the whole thing of course. What is the relation of words to what they represent and what relation should they have? Despite the fact that most of our words seem like arbitrary tautologies if you back to when the words first emerged it's likely that they would contain at least some descriptive, meaningful element. I don't think human beings like to arbitrarily name things. Plato does speculate on the origin of the very first language, being of of course divine, but there's been plenty of development since. It's also very fitting in light of this dialogue at just how many words throughout Western languages today actually come from the use of Greek terms to describe a concept.

It appears that in continuing to develop our language Plato prefers a well thought out planned vocabulary in which even pronunciation will have a basis in the nature of whatever is being named. In this spirit of course we have today language academies that set out to regulate vocabulary and grammar. The organic, spontaneous development of new languages is frowned upon, but this is not entirely elaborated upon other than implying that a disconnect between words and what they represent is bad.

The implication wasn't just an emphasis on aesthetics however, which is brought up as a factor in forming words sometimes, but rather a clear, specific effort at forming an ideal language to communicate ideas, reminding me of the 20th century's logical positivism, and the effort to give language the same precision as mathematics.

Is there an implication that a word with no connection to what it represents leads to a different form of thinking, because I would disagree. Even an arbitrarily chosen name can do the job right, and I'm not sure careful selection of words and sounds would have too much of an impact. I get however, the importance of proper definitions, and who doesn't hate it when a discussion runs into a semantics argument.

The philosophy of Heraclitus, a world in flux, a world without objective reality is brought up, and that's really an underlying concern through all of this because Plato of course believes in an objective world of ideas. Imagine a language that has broken off from a solid core of ideas, flowing away from them over a slick layer of ambiguity. This is the concern, and I get it. I understand the importance of clear definitions, but when people like the Sophists start wandering into relativism or nihilism, I don't think it's the language that we ought to blame.

tartışma Yunanca kelimeler üzerinden yürüdüğü için ve ben de Yunanca bilmediğim için biraz zorlayıcı oldu. bunun dışında dil felsefesi gibi çok sevdiğim bir alanın temel sorunlarını bu kadar kolay anlaşılabilir bir biçimde tartışmaya açması, kıymetini attırıyor. adlar ve nesneler arasındaki ilişki, adların ilk kez nasıl, neye göre ve kim tarafından verildiği, adların işlevi gibi soruları düşünmenizi sağlıyor.

Una lección de etimologías y el comienzo de una discusión que en la filosofía del lenguaje ha crecido hasta nuestros días

The first part can't all be gibberish. There are some things Socrates mentions in passing, without further investigation but as premises for the absurd etymologies, which are "Platonic common sense": that desire is a shackle, that the soul separated from the body is more susceptible to desiring virtue, that the good man is a daimonic man etc. Of these, some which might be worth investigating are the ones similar – including in phrasing – to things said in the Phaedrus: the soul as prime mover and eros as a flowing stream introduced through the eyes. There's also the whole thing about gods and humans having different names for the same thing, which Socrates uses as a device in the palinode: what men call eros, the gods call pteros. But anyway.

The second part feels rushed. Socrates covers a lot of epistemological ground simply to reach the conclusion that "names" are not a good criteria for those in search of true knowledge. In other words, to discredit the etymology so valued in rhetorical speech in that time. The concept of Forms is introduced almost as an afterthought. In this sense, the conclusion of the Cratylus seems like part of a Platonic effort to prove that knowledge without the Forms is impossible, which, of course, is why this dialogue is placed directly before the Theaetetus in the Thrasyllian tetralogy.

On the proper naming of things.

“For as his name, so also is his nature” [Plato 395]

Cratylism throughout this narrative is an extreme naturalism: sign and signifier are so alike as to erase the gap between them. Hermogenes’ position is more relativist: the consequence is language cannot be language and so the LOGOS cannot disclose the thing.

Socrates and Hermogenes discuss whether names are identical to the thing named. The original “Cratylian” view is names are “fit” to the named. This leads Socrates into an extended genealogy showing how Greek names arise from the essences of the named.

Throughout Socrates points to a number of problems: if we keep abstracting words and names for their meaning, the process will go on forever.

P1: Primary names precede analysis and arise from the essences.

Socrates then espouses something like a mimetic theory: names imitate things [422]. But Socrates does not hold to a strict correspondence theory. If all things are in motion and flux (as the Greek world said they were) how can we have a stable conception of a thing?

Further, how will a man name something without knowing what it is, and how could he know it without the name [438]? This is the problem of knowledge. Plato’s hinted answer is that the knower is always seeking beyond himself. To quote Pickstock, “It is a pre-understanding of the unknown” (Late Arrival of Language, 240).

Plato seems to end this dialogue with an aporia: both relativism and Cratylism are wrong.

On naming. Main arguments: proper naming method = closely resembling the thing being named; naming has element of convention, which allow bad names to persist.

Antik Yunanca bilerek okunmalı.(Hayaller aleminde tabii) Geçen her kelimenin kökü/kökeni ve kendisi dipnotta Türkçe olarak verilmeliydi. Yoksa yarısını anlamış oluyoruz kitabın. Başka bir versiyonu daha okumam gerekecek. Dialogların en ilginçlerinden biriydi Kratylos.

Whilst seemingly the earliest surviving work of philosophy of language, its value is undeniably limited in direct proportion to my inexperience with ancient greek.

That being said, it’s not as if there were not plenty to explore here, even if your grasp on the Hellenic dialect and its history leaves much to be desired.

For one, the brief discussion of Hades is absolutely fascinating. Socrates argues that the reason none return from the realm of the dead is because Hades is “the perfect and accomplished” Sophist, the most formidable seducer of desire — a desire so strong in those souls of the dead that they willingly choose never to return to the land of the living. Beyond the chilling implications for the idea of Sophistry as a manipulation of desire via the enticement of virtue in knowledge, might there be something to be said here, at least analogically, in relation to the death drive?

Although the meat of the text submerges itself in an endless stream of etymologies, scattered throughout are some incredibly worthwhile and shockingly modern discourses on language-as-nature vs language-as-convention.

With every dialogue I become more and more convinced that Whitehead’s “european philosophy consists of a series of footnotes to Plato” is more than just a provocative witticism.

no quiero seguir en la universidad por favor llamen a mi mamá