Five-minute digest
Cratylus
Summary
The Cratylus is Plato's dialogue on the correctness of names, and the earliest surviving Western treatment of whether words belong to things by nature or by human agreement. Hermogenes, a poor brother of the rich Callias, has been arguing with Cratylus, a follower of Heraclitus. Cratylus holds that every thing has a naturally correct name, the same for Greeks and barbarians, and teases Hermogenes that 'Hermogenes' (son of Hermes, god of luck and gain) is not really his name. Hermogenes holds that a name is whatever people agree to call something, as masters rename slaves. Socrates, who jokes that he heard only the one-drachma lecture of the sophist Prodicus, takes up both sides in turn. Against Hermogenes, he argues that if statements can be true or false, so can names, and that if things have stable natures (as against Protagoras' 'man is the measure'), then naming is an action with a right way to perform it. A name is a tool for teaching and for dividing things according to their natures, as a shuttle divides the threads of a web. Tools are made by craftsmen; names are made by a skilled 'legislator' or name-giver, who looks to the ideal form of the name and should work under the direction of the dialectician, the person who knows how to ask and answer. Socrates then launches into a long, increasingly fantastic run of etymologies, which he attributes to a fit of inspiration caught from the soothsayer Euthyphro: names of heroes (Agamemnon, Orestes), gods (Zeus, Hestia, Poseidon, Apollo, Athena, Hermes), the heavens, and moral terms (wisdom, justice, courage). Many of them, he observes, suggest that the original name-givers thought all things in motion, as Heraclitus did, perhaps because the name-givers were dizzy themselves. When the analysis reaches primary names that cannot be broken down, Socrates proposes that letters imitate the essence of things by sound: rho for motion, iota for subtlety, lambda for smoothness. Turning to Cratylus, who welcomes all this, Socrates presses the other way. Names are images, and images can be more or less like what they represent; Cratylus' view that a misapplied name is not a name at all cannot explain false speech. Words like the Greek for 'hard' work despite containing a 'smooth' letter, which shows that custom and convention play a part after all. Finally, if names were given by people who believed in universal flux, we cannot learn the truth of things from names; things must be studied in themselves. And if everything flows, there could be no knowledge, no stable beauty or good. Socrates asks Cratylus not to trust names or the givers of names so far, and Cratylus, unpersuaded, leaves for the country still inclining to Heraclitus.
Top Lessons
A name is a tool for dividing the world rightly
Socrates' central analogy is that a name is an instrument of teaching and distinguishing natures, as a shuttle separates threads. Like any tool, it can be well or badly made, and its best judge is the one who uses it: the dialectician who asks and answers. For students learning grammar and logic, the point is that words are neither arbitrary noises nor magic keys; they serve thought and can be judged by how well they help us see distinctions that are really there.
Etymology: insight, play and the danger of the clever derivation
The long middle section mixes genuine observations with deliberately extravagant derivations, which Socrates credits to borrowed inspiration and promises to purify himself of the next day. Readers have long disagreed over how serious he is. The lesson for students is to enjoy wordplay while asking what it proves: an attractive derivation may show what the name-givers believed, not what is true.
Dizzy philosophers and a world in flux
Socrates notices that many names seem to encode motion and suggests that their makers, like some contemporary philosophers, were dizzy from going round and round and mistook their own condition for the nature of things. The closing argument draws the consequence: if all things flow, nothing could be known or be beautiful in a stable way. Students meet here the basic Platonic claim that knowledge requires something that abides.
Learn from the things themselves
The dialogue's conclusion is modest but firm: the knowledge of things is not to be derived from names but from the things studied in themselves, and no sensible person will put the education of his mind in the power of names. Socrates sends Cratylus off with the advice to reflect like a man and not accept a doctrine too easily, since he is young and of an age to learn. The ending models how to leave a question open without giving up on truth.
Verified Quotes
“there is an ancient saying, that “hard is the knowledge of the good.” And the knowledge of names is a great part of knowledge”
“for there is no name given to anything by nature; all is convention and habit of the users”
“For if what appears to each man is true to him, one man cannot in reality be wiser than another”
“Then a name is an instrument of teaching and of distinguishing natures, as the shuttle is of distinguishing the threads of the web”
“And the work of the legislator is to give names, and the dialectician must be his director if the names are to be rightly given”
“just as any one of us would not recognize the same drugs under different disguises of colour and smell, although to the physician, who regards the power of them, they are the same”
“For some say that the body is the grave (sema) of the soul which may be thought to be buried in our present life”
“he compares them to the stream of a river, and says that you cannot go into the same water twice”
“are always getting dizzy from constantly going round and round, and then they imagine that the world is going round and round and moving in all directions”
“But we may admit so much, that the knowledge of things is not to be derived from names. No; they must be studied and investigated in themselves”
“no man of sense will like to put himself or the education of his mind in the power of names”
“Reflect well and like a man, and do not easily accept such a doctrine; for you are young and of an age to learn. And when you have found the truth, come and tell me”
Medical Lens
The Cratylus is not about medicine, but it records several Greek medical and religious assumptions in passing. Socrates compares the etymologist to a physician who recognises the same drug under different colours and smells; he cites physicians' names (Iatrocles, Acesimbrotus) as names sharing a meaning; he explains Apollo's name partly through the purifications, fumigations and washings used by doctors and diviners to make a person pure 'both in body and soul'; and he reports the Orphic view of the body (soma) as the tomb (sema) or prison of the soul. The closing image of a world that 'has a running at the nose' uses catarrh as a figure for universal flux. These are useful for historians of how medicine, purification and religion overlapped in classical Greece, not as statements of Plato's own medical views.
- Stephanus 394a-c
The physician recognises one drug under different disguises; names for a physician such as Iatrocles and Acesimbrotus share a meaning despite different letters.
- Stephanus 400b-c
Etymologies of psyche (soul) and soma (body), including the Orphic view of the body as tomb or prison where the soul pays a penalty.
- Stephanus 404e-405c
Apollo's four powers (music, prophecy, medicine, archery); the purgations, fumigations and lustral washings of doctors and diviners aim at purity of body and soul.
- Stephanus 440c-d
Socrates refuses to believe that all things leak like a pot or that the world suffers from a running at the nose.