Cratylus
- Language:
- English
- Translation:
- Benjamin Jowett
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~26,300 words · 125 passages
Cite this work
- APAPlato. (n.d.). Cratylus (Benjamin Jowett, Trans.). Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/plato/cratylus
- MLAPlato. Cratylus. Translated by Benjamin Jowett. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/plato/cratylus.
- ChicagoPlato. Cratylus. Translated by Benjamin Jowett. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/plato/cratylus.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
Are the names of things correct by nature or by convention? The dialogue spends half its length on etymologies — many of them fanciful — only to conclude that words do not teach us reality.
Context and history
The earliest surviving treatise on philosophy of language, and the conclusion is what counts: if you want to know things, look at the things and not at their names. The invented etymologies have amused philologists for centuries, and Plato was probably laughing too.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
several names for a general, as, for example, Agis (leader) and Polemarchus (chief in war) and Eupolemus (good warrior); and others which denote a physician, as Iatrocles (famous healer) and Acesimbrotus (curer of mortals); and there are many others which might be cited, differing in their syllables and letters, but having the same meaning. Would you not say so? HERMOGENES: Yes. SOCRATES: The same names, then, ought to be assigned to those who follow in the course of nature? HERMOGENES: Yes. SOCRATES: And what of those who follow out of the course of nature, and are prodigies? for example, when a good and religious man has an irreligious son, he ought to bear the name not of his father, but of the class to which he belongs, just as in the case which was before supposed of a horse foaling a calf. HERMOGENES: Quite true. SOCRATES: Then the irreligious son of a religious father should be called irreligious? HERMOGENES: Certainly. SOCRATES: He should not be called Theophilus (beloved of God) or Mnesitheus (mindful of God), or any of these names: if names are correctly given, his should have an opposite meaning. HERMOGENES: Certainly, Socrates. SOCRATES: Again, Hermogenes, there is Orestes (the man of the mountains) who appears to be rightly called; whether chance gave the name, or perhaps some poet who meant to express the brutality and fierceness and mountain wildness of his hero’s nature. HERMOGENES: That is very likely, Socrates. SOCRATES: And his father’s name is also according to nature. HERMOGENES: Clearly.