Cratylus
by Plato
- Pages
- about 192
- Category
- Philosophy
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 3.5 h at 250 wpm
From the opening
The Cratylus has always been a source of perplexity to the student of
Plato. While in fancy and humour, and perfection of style and
metaphysical originality, this dialogue may be ranked with the best of
the Platonic writings, there has been an uncertainty about the motive
of the piece, which interpreters have hitherto not succeeded in
dispelling. We need not suppose that Plato used words in order to
conceal his thoughts, or that he would have been unintelligible to an
educated contemporary. In the Phaedrus and Euthydemus we also find a
difficulty in determining the precise aim of the author. Plato wrote
satires in the form of dialogues, and his meaning, like that of other
satirical writers, has often slept in the ear of posterity. Two causes
may be assigned for this obscurity: 1st, the subtlety and allusiveness
of this species of composition; 2nd, the difficulty of reproducing a
state of life and literature which has passed away. A satire is
unmeaning unless we can place ourselves back among the persons and
thoughts of the age in which it was written. Had the treatise 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 Plato better, and many points which are now attributed to
the extravagance of Socrates’ humour would have been found, like the
allusions of Aristophanes in the Clouds, to have gone home to the
sophists and grammarians of the day.
For the age was very busy with philological speculation; and many
questions were beginning to be asked about language which were parallel
to other questions about justice, virtue, knowledge, and were
illustrated in a similar manner by the analogy of the arts. Was there a
correctness in words, and were they given by nature or convention?
A short sample. Read the whole book
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