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sookieskipper's review
3.0
Socrates is also satirizing the endless fertility of the human mind in spinning arguments out of nothing, and employing the most trifling and fanciful analogies in support of a theory.
So is the introduction to Cratylus dialogue. Socrates goes on a lengthy monologue as expected about the origins of words and their meanings. Essentially it's a satire on etymologists. Plato underhandedly accepts influences of foreign language (like Sanskrit) on Greek but doesn't explore in detail.
A bit lengthy for the subject matter but interesting.
[I kinda miss haughty Socrates...]
So is the introduction to Cratylus dialogue. Socrates goes on a lengthy monologue as expected about the origins of words and their meanings. Essentially it's a satire on etymologists. Plato underhandedly accepts influences of foreign language (like Sanskrit) on Greek but doesn't explore in detail.
A bit lengthy for the subject matter but interesting.
[I kinda miss haughty Socrates...]
kxowledge's review
3.0
The topic of Cratylus is the correctness of names – and hence the criteria that should determine the correct choice of name. On one side, Cratylus argues that there is a “correctness of name for each thing, one that belongs to it by nature”; on the other, Hermogenes stance is that the correctness of names is determined only by convention and agreement.
I do not believe that the same names could have been attached to quite different object and the same objects given quite different names (extreme conventionalism) because names are given accordingly to the characteristics that we perceive the object to have. Etymology, linguistics, and philology all show us that words are not created in a void.
The bulk of Cratylus is long (and more or less fallacious) etymological explanations of important Greek words. It’s a longwinded quasi-monologue t that can simply skimmed over: on the whole the argument doesn’t bring us much value (Astyanax’s contemporary equivalent would be Remus Lupin, and I think that can sum my entire thesis: Plato forgets about human agency), and on the whole the argument doesn’t bring us much value (that is, value relevant to the current discussion), except as a reminder that names have a history behind them.
Indeed, then, as Socrates-Plato explains, words are not attached in a merely arbitrary way to their objects. Speaking is a human action. A name indeed is a sort of tool, not to “divide things according to their natures” but rather to transmit knowledge. Yet, names are not chosen arbitrarily; there is a history behind each name.
Except, names are not given based on the essence of a thing, but rather on our perception of it. The namegiver did not have to know the thing he was naming, but rather he gave a name based on what he believed the thing to be. Knowledge of its essence is not a requirement for naming. It might be that names cannot aspire to being perfect encapsulation of their objects’ essences, but they don’t have to try to do so in the first place. Rather, the naming is a process entirely human, in that it is done for humans by humans based on human’s perceptions.
Names are given by people – things don’t need names to exist.
I do agree that “no name belongs to a particular thing by nature” (extreme naturalism) – while it is a very romantic notion (a true name to be called upon, that knowing the true name of things gives you power over them) which might find some ground in psychology (e.g. the benefit that comes with getting a diagnosis, or recognizing that abuse is indeed abuse), it is not true for nature: Nature does not care.
[a draft of my arguments goes like this: (1) Mary Oliver’s poem that has a fox (or is it a turtle?) in it; (2) the research on bilingualism shows that people think in concepts; (3) untranslatable words: the same feeling is present whether or not you have a word for it; (4) scientific phenomena: they exist even before they get discovered and names and they will go on existing even if we don’t understand them]
This dialogue belongs to the early middle phase of Plato, the phase in which he develops his theory of the Forms – you might see reminiscences of that in my argument as well and would not be wrong. Things might be “by themselves, in relation to their own being or essence, which is theirs by nature”, but Names are nor Things nor the essence of the Things.
Anthropomorphic gods might “call themselves by true [names]”, but that’s only because we are defining them as if they were human. If the Thing, and hence the God, is not human – will it call himself with a name? [The fox says no].
I do not believe that the same names could have been attached to quite different object and the same objects given quite different names (extreme conventionalism) because names are given accordingly to the characteristics that we perceive the object to have. Etymology, linguistics, and philology all show us that words are not created in a void.
The bulk of Cratylus is long (and more or less fallacious) etymological explanations of important Greek words. It’s a longwinded quasi-monologue t that can simply skimmed over: on the whole the argument doesn’t bring us much value (Astyanax’s contemporary equivalent would be Remus Lupin, and I think that can sum my entire thesis: Plato forgets about human agency), and on the whole the argument doesn’t bring us much value (that is, value relevant to the current discussion), except as a reminder that names have a history behind them.
Indeed, then, as Socrates-Plato explains, words are not attached in a merely arbitrary way to their objects. Speaking is a human action. A name indeed is a sort of tool, not to “divide things according to their natures” but rather to transmit knowledge. Yet, names are not chosen arbitrarily; there is a history behind each name.
Except, names are not given based on the essence of a thing, but rather on our perception of it. The namegiver did not have to know the thing he was naming, but rather he gave a name based on what he believed the thing to be. Knowledge of its essence is not a requirement for naming. It might be that names cannot aspire to being perfect encapsulation of their objects’ essences, but they don’t have to try to do so in the first place. Rather, the naming is a process entirely human, in that it is done for humans by humans based on human’s perceptions.
Names are given by people – things don’t need names to exist.
I do agree that “no name belongs to a particular thing by nature” (extreme naturalism) – while it is a very romantic notion (a true name to be called upon, that knowing the true name of things gives you power over them) which might find some ground in psychology (e.g. the benefit that comes with getting a diagnosis, or recognizing that abuse is indeed abuse), it is not true for nature: Nature does not care.
[a draft of my arguments goes like this: (1) Mary Oliver’s poem that has a fox (or is it a turtle?) in it; (2) the research on bilingualism shows that people think in concepts; (3) untranslatable words: the same feeling is present whether or not you have a word for it; (4) scientific phenomena: they exist even before they get discovered and names and they will go on existing even if we don’t understand them]
This dialogue belongs to the early middle phase of Plato, the phase in which he develops his theory of the Forms – you might see reminiscences of that in my argument as well and would not be wrong. Things might be “by themselves, in relation to their own being or essence, which is theirs by nature”, but Names are nor Things nor the essence of the Things.
Anthropomorphic gods might “call themselves by true [names]”, but that’s only because we are defining them as if they were human. If the Thing, and hence the God, is not human – will it call himself with a name? [The fox says no].
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