Cratylus (dialogue)

Cratylus (/ˈkrætɪləs/ KRAT-il-əs; Ancient Greek: Κρατύλος, Kratylos) is the name of a dialogue by Plato. Most modern scholars agree that it was written mostly during Plato's so-called middle period.^[1] In the dialogue, Socrates is asked by two men, Cratylus and Hermogenes, to tell them whether names are "conventional" or "natural", that is, whether language is a system of arbitrary signs or whether words have an intrinsic relation to the things they signify.

The individual Cratylus was the first intellectual influence on Plato.^[2] Aristotle states that Cratylus influenced Plato by introducing to him the teachings of Heraclitus, according to MW. Riley.^[3]

ρ ('r') is a "tool for copying every sort of motion ()."^[23]^{[foot 1]}

κίνησις

ι ('i') for imitating "all the small things that can most easily penetrate everything",^{[foot 2]}

[24]

φ ('phi'), ψ ('psi'). σ ('s'), and ζ ('z') as "all these letters are pronounced with an expulsion of breath", they are most appropriate for imitating "blowing or hard breathing".^{[foot 3]}

[25]

δ ('d') and τ ('t') as both involve "compression and [the] stopping of the power of the tongue" when pronounced, they are most appropriate for words indicating a lack or stopping of motion.^[26]^{[foot 4]}

[25]

λ ('l'), as "the tongue glides most of all" when pronounced, it is most appropriate for words denoting a sort of gliding.^{[foot 5]}

[26]

γ ('g') best used when imitating "something cloying", as the gliding of the tongue is stopped when pronounced.^{[foot 6]}

[26]

ν ('n') best used when imitating inward things, as it is "sounded inwardly".^[27]^{[foot 7]}

[26]

α ('a'), η ('long e') best used when imitating large things, as they are both "pronounced long".^{[foot 8]}

[27]

ο ('o') best used when imitating roundness.^{[foot 9]}

[27]

Although these are clear examples of onomatopoeia, Socrates's statement that words are not musical imitations of nature suggests that Plato did not believe that language itself generates from sound words.^[28]

Influence, legacy[edit]

German psychologist Karl Ludwig Bühler used the Cratylus dialogue as the basis for his organon model of communication, published in 1934.^[31]

Gérard Genette, in the work ‘Mimologie. Voyage en Cratilie’ (1976), starts from Plato's speech to argue the idea of arbitrariness of the sign: according to this thesis, already supported by the great linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, the connection between language and objects is not natural, but culturally determined. The ideas developed in the Cratylus, although sometimes dated, have historically been an important point of reference in the development of Linguistics.

On the basis of the Craylus Gaetano Licata has reconstructed in the essay ‘Plato’s theory of language. Perspectives on the concept of truth’ (2007, Il Melangolo), the platonic conception of semantics, according to which names have a natural link (an essential foundation) with their "nominatum".^[32]

An early translation was made by in 1804.

Thomas Taylor

Benjamin Jowett (1892). . Oxford University Press.

The Dialogues of Plato, in 5 vols 3rd edition revised and corrected

Plato: Cratylus, Parmenides, Greater Hippias, Lesser Hippias. With translation by Harold N. Fowler. Loeb Classical Library 167. Harvard Univ. Press (originally published 1926). 9780674991859 HUP listing

ISBN

Plato: Opera, Volume I. Oxford Classical Texts. 978-0198145691

ISBN

Plato: Complete Works. Hackett, 1997. 978-0872203495

ISBN

Dalimier, C., 1998, Platon, Cratyle, Paris: Flammarion.

Méridier, L., 1931, Platon, Cratyle, Paris: Les belles lettres.

Reeve, C. D. C., 1997, Plato, Cratylus: translated with introduction and notes, Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett; reprinted in J.M. Cooper. (ed.) Plato, Complete Works, Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett.

Cratylism

Map–territory relation

Nirukta

Orthotes Onomaton

Sound symbolism

True name

Ackrill, J. L., 1994, ‘Language and reality in Plato’s Cratylus’, in A. Alberti (ed.) Realtà e ragione, Florence: Olschki: 9–28; repr. in Ackrill, Essays on Plato and Aristotle, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997: 33–52.

Ademollo, F., 2011, The ‘Cratylus’ of Plato: a Commentary, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Annas, J., 1982, ‘Knowledge and language: the Theaetetus and Cratylus’, in Schofield and Nussbaum 1982: 95–114.

Barney, R., 2001, Names and Nature in Plato’s Cratylus, New York and London: Routledge.

Baxter, T. M. S., 1992, The Cratylus: Plato’s Critique of Naming, Leiden: Brill.

Calvert, B., 1970, ‘Forms and flux in Plato’s Cratylus’, Phronesis, 15: 26–47.

Grote, G., 1865, Plato and the Other Companions of Sokrates, 3 vols., London: John Murray.

Kahn, C. H., 1973, ‘Language and ontology in the Cratylus’, in E. N. Lee, A. P. D. Mourelatos, R. M. Rorty (ed.), Exegesis and Argument, New York: Humanities Press, 152–76.

Ketchum, R. J., 1979, ‘Names, Forms and conventionalism: Cratylus 383–395’, Phronesis, 24: 133–47

Kretzmann, N., 1971, ‘Plato on the correctness of names’, American Philosophical Quarterly, 8: 126–38

Levin, S. B., 2001, The Ancient Quarrel between Philosophy and Poetry Revisited. Plato and the Literary Tradition, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Mackenzie, M. M., 1986, ‘Putting the Cratylus in its place’, Classical Quarterly, 36: 124–50.

Robinson, R., 1969, ‘The theory of names in Plato’s Cratylus’ and ‘A criticism of Plato’s Cratylus’, in Essays in Greek Philosophy, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 100–38.

Schofield, M., 1982, ‘The dénouement of the Cratylus’, in Schofield and Nussbaum 1982: 61–81.

Schofield, M., and Nussbaum, M. (ed.), 1982, Language and Logos, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Silverman, A., 2001, ‘The end of the Cratylus: limning the world’, Ancient Philosophy, 21: 1–18.

Williams, B., 1982, ‘Cratylus’ theory of names and its refutation’, in Schofield and Nussbaum 1982: 83–93.

Allan, D. J., 1954, ‘The problem of Cratylus’, American Journal of Philology, 75: 271–87.

Kirk, G. S., 1951, ‘The problem of Cratylus’, American Journal of Philology, 72: 225–53.

Luce, J. V., 1964, ‘The date of the Cratylus’, American Journal of Philology, 85: 136–54.

Ross, W. D., 1955, ‘The date of Plato’s Cratylus’, Revue Internationale de Philosophie, 32: 187–96.

at Standard Ebooks

Cratylus, in a collection of Plato's Dialogues

Bibliography on Plato's Cratylus (PDF)

translation by Benjamin Jowett (1892) starting at Page 323

Cratylus

public domain audiobook at LibriVox