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An excerpt from: Plato's Cratylus
(Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
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First published Wed Oct 4, 2006
Copyright © 2006
by
David Sedley <
dns1@cam.ac.uk>
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The formal topic of the Cratylus is ‘correctness of
names’, a hot topic in the late fifth cent-
ury BC when the dialogue has its dramatic setting. Sophists like
Prodicus offered training courses in this subject, sometimes perhaps
meaning by it little more than lessons in correct diction.
But that practical issue spawned the theoretical question,
what criteria determine the correct choice of name for
any given object? And in the Cratylus Socrates'
two pri- mary interlocutors, Hermogenes and Cratylus (the latter
of whom is reported by Aristotle to have been an early
philosophical influence on Plato), represent two diametrically
op- posed answers to that question.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
BACK.
As a preliminary, it is important to be clear about what is meant by
‘names’. The plural noun onomata (singular
onoma), translated ‘names’, in fact varies
between being (a) a general term for ‘words’, (b) more
narrowly, nouns, or perhaps nouns and adjectives, and (c) in certain
contexts, proper names alone. In (a), the most generic use, it comes
to designate language as such. Ultimately, for this reason, the
Cratylus is Plato's dialogue about language, even if
the elements of language on which it concentrates are in fact mainly
nouns. Proper names are included among these nouns, and at times are
treated as paradigmatic examples of them.
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