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Cratylus

Plato,

C.D.C. Reeve (Translator)

3.62 · Rating details · 1,115 ratings · 111 reviews

"It is. . . remarkable that Reeve's is the first new English translation since Fowler's Loeb edition of 1926. Fortunately, Reeve has done an excellent job. His version is not slavishly literal but is in general very accurate. It is also very clear and readable. Reeve is particularly to be congratulated for having produced versions of some of the more torturous passages, wh ...more

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Jul 19, 2014 Manny rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: linguistics-and-philosophy, well-i-think-its-funny

[Outside the Potts residence. JEREMY, JEMIMA, SOCRATES]

SOCRATES: Good day, young friends. May I inquire whether your father is at home?

JEMIMA: I’m sorry, Daddy is out.

JEREMY: He’s trying to sell an invention.

JEMIMA: Can we help you, Mr…?

SOCRATES: Socrates. My unworthy name is Socrates.

JEREMY: The Socrates?

JEMIMA: The one who appears in Cratylus?

JEREMY: Daddy’s been reading it to us at bedtime for the last week.

SOCRATES: Has he indeed! And what did you all think of it?

JEMIMA: He said you had som ...more

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Jan 30, 2019 Roy Lotz rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: platonic-love

Cratylus is one of Plato’s early-middle dialogues. It is somewhat puzzling for the modern reader, since much of the dialogue is taken up with fanciful folk etymologies of Greek words. Socrates is investigating whether the names of the Gods, heroes, citizens, or natural elements are meaningful, and in the process spins off etymology after etymology, each one more implausible than the next. The intention seems to be mockery; just as Plato earlier reveals the faulty logic of the sophists, so he exp Cratylus is one of Plato’s early-middle dialogues. It is somewhat puzzling for the modern reader, since much of the dialogue is taken up with fanciful folk etymologies of Greek words. Socrates is investigating whether the names of the Gods, heroes, citizens, or natural elements are meaningful, and in the process spins off etymology after etymology, each one more implausible than the next. The intention seems to be mockery; just as Plato earlier reveals the faulty logic of the sophists, so he exposes the emptiness of grammarians. I wish I could say that the satire has lost its bite with the passage of time; but, alas, folk etymologies remain common, and I have heard argument-from-word-origin too many times for comfort.

Still, the dialogue can be fairly dull if you do not know ancient Greek. But the beginning and the end retain philosophic interest. Socrates investigates the connection between words and things. Cratylus holds that names are essential and elemental, even god-given, while Hermogenes first maintains that the signifier is arbitrary. Socrates effectively confuses both parties, until nobody is quite sure what they think. Along the way, several theories are entertained that now seem hopelessly naive, such that legislators gave original, onomatopoeic names long ago. Nevertheless, given the time in which it was written, this dialogue shows a remarkable prescience in its view of language and Plato’s willingness to consider multiple factors. One wonders, then, to what extent Plato himself took it seriously—where the satire begins and ends—since questions of language are absent from his mature system.

By chance, I have just heard a recent version of the onomatopoeic theory of names (that the sounds of names imitate what they signify), put forward by Daniel Tammet (famous for his mental math and memory abilities) in a TED talk. Tammet suggests that names have emotional tones in their sound that even non-native speakers can grasp. He uses the Icelandic word "hnugginn" as an example, which apparently means "sad." According to Tammet, respondents with no knowledge of Icelandic are more likely to associate this word with negative emotions when given a choice. This certainly wasn't true in my case, since the word reminded me immediately of "hugging." I think Tammet would profit from this dialogue. ...more

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Oct 21, 2016 Sookie rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, translated

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 ...more

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May 24, 2020 Dorotea rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: philosophy, read-in-french, ancient-greek-lit, read-in-english, bsc-theology, language-learning-and-linguistics

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 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].
...more

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Mar 31, 2018 Sotiris Makrygiannis rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: audio-book, internet, librivox

On the importance of names and use of the right words and names

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Apr 19, 2021 Lucas rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: ancient-literature, ancient-greek, ancient-greece, philosophy

Plato's Crátilo is well-known for being philosophy's first foray into the field of linguistics. Only based on that, it should be required reading for anyone interested in the topic. I'd argue that additionally it should be read because, as most of Plato's early writing is really good at messing with your head. Here, our hero Socrates toys with the ideas of the titular character and a confused youngster named Hermogenes.

They discuss the origin of words, more precisely the nature of "naming". The ...more

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Feb 28, 2021 Linton rated it liked it

Shelves: philosophy, own-hardcover, research-2021

Socrates gives Hermogenes a brief lesson on mythological etymology.

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Mar 07, 2020 Illiterate rated it liked it

A heavily satirical dialogue. Socrates argues language is historical, not arbitrary or metaphysical. Can we enjoy it as mocking deconstruction before the letter?

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Jun 19, 2021 Anmol rated it liked it

This will be my final Plato for the foreseeable future: I wanted familiarity with his major works, and I have that now. Cratylus is weird to modern readers because it considers a problem people haven't thought about in a long time and it honestly appears absurd to us today: the nature of naming, if people are named according to their nature or simply by convention? Most of us would pick the latter, and rightly so. The obvious problem with taking the former perspective is that naming a child by i ...more

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Feb 12, 2022 Shubham Suroshe rated it liked it

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Aug 10, 2020 Buck rated it really liked it

Ending arguments redeem the very boring extended parody of etymologists that comprises 60% of the book

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Apr 18, 2022 hungcq rated it really liked it

On naming. Main arguments: proper naming method = closely resembling the thing being named; naming has element of convention, which allow bad names to persist.

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Oct 31, 2021 Thomas Lønn Hammer rated it really liked it

Shelves: philosophy

On the proper naming of things.

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Jun 30, 2020 Guinevere rated it it was amazing

Shelves: platonism, language

MQ: Does correctness of names (ὀρθότης ὀνόματος) come from convention and agreement (συνθήκη καὶ ὁμολογία) or does it come from nature (φύσις)? Is there an innate/inherent connection between names and their referents (and if so, by what criteria were these names found/made)? Is it more accurate to think of a name as an instrument or as a likeness? If a name is an instrument, what is that instrument used for, and how is the instrument suited to its task? What is the role of language in platonic d ...more

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Jul 15, 2020 Lyndon Goodacre rated it liked it · review of another edition

This longish conversation explores the spectrum between words that sound like what they name (onomatopoeia) and words that are seemingly random and only "correct" or "true" insofar as they become conventional (what I think most linguists would say about most words today).

Between those two poles, more waypoints come up than you might expect—in the space of ideas, not geography or character development. The occasion is a debate between Socrates and his friends Cratylus and Hermogenes. Mostly Socra ...more

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Jan 26, 2016 Jacob Aitken rated it really liked it

Shelves: epistemology, philosophy, true-classics

“For as his name, so also is his nature” [Plato 395]

Cratylism throughout this narrative is an extreme naturalism: sign and signifier are so alike as to erase the gap between them. Hermogenes’ position is more relativist: the consequence is language cannot be language and so the LOGOS cannot disclose the thing.

Socrates and Hermogenes discuss whether names are identical to the thing named. The original “Cratylian” view is names are “fit” to the named. This leads Socrates into an extended genealogy ...more

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Dec 25, 2016 Michael rated it liked it · review of another edition

I've reached the conclusion that you can't actually go wrong with one of the Dialogues. With that in mind, Cratylus has, I think, lost some of its charm with age. A great deal of the fanciful etymologies (and more than likely, at least a little satirical) are, of course, related to Classical Greek. Without a deep knowledge of Classical Greek, a lot of the humour is gone.

Nonetheless, there is still a lot that's fun here. The general poking at etymology can be enjoyed for its own sake and a clear ...more

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Jan 11, 2019 MJD rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I think that this book is highly relevant for Americans in 2019, even though this was written by a Greek living a long time ago, given the current kinds of cultural and political debates in America that center on language use (such as the merits of political correctness, gender pronouns, etc.). I think that the exploration of the uses and values of language in this book can help one better think through the current American arguments about the uses and values of language.

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Apr 17, 2018 Alex rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: plato, greek

There wasn't as much philosophy as I would've expected here, and it seemed that most of the dialogue was etymology in prose. I'm sure a lot of the impact is lost through translation, and the poor translator kept having to provide transliterations. I found it a little interesting at just how many words Socrates was able to find a meaningful root for, especially the names of the gods, and I wondered how many of his educated guesses were actually right. I was even surprised when he was finally stum There wasn't as much philosophy as I would've expected here, and it seemed that most of the dialogue was etymology in prose. I'm sure a lot of the impact is lost through translation, and the poor translator kept having to provide transliterations. I found it a little interesting at just how many words Socrates was able to find a meaningful root for, especially the names of the gods, and I wondered how many of his educated guesses were actually right. I was even surprised when he was finally stumped placing the blame naturally enough on the likelihood that the word was of foreign extraction.

A thread of philosophy still runs through the whole thing of course. What is the relation of words to what they represent and what relation should they have? Despite the fact that most of our words seem like arbitrary tautologies if you back to when the words first emerged it's likely that they would contain at least some descriptive, meaningful element. I don't think human beings like to arbitrarily name things. Plato does speculate on the origin of the very first language, being of of course divine, but there's been plenty of development since. It's also very fitting in light of this dialogue at just how many words throughout Western languages today actually come from the use of Greek terms to describe a concept.

It appears that in continuing to develop our language Plato prefers a well thought out planned vocabulary in which even pronunciation will have a basis in the nature of whatever is being named. In this spirit of course we have today language academies that set out to regulate vocabulary and grammar. The organic, spontaneous development of new languages is frowned upon, but this is not entirely elaborated upon other than implying that a disconnect between words and what they represent is bad.

The implication wasn't just an emphasis on aesthetics however, which is brought up as a factor in forming words sometimes, but rather a clear, specific effort at forming an ideal language to communicate ideas, reminding me of the 20th century's logical positivism, and the effort to give language the same precision as mathematics.

Is there an implication that a word with no connection to what it represents leads to a different form of thinking, because I would disagree. Even an arbitrarily chosen name can do the job right, and I'm not sure careful selection of words and sounds would have too much of an impact. I get however, the importance of proper definitions, and who doesn't hate it when a discussion runs into a semantics argument.

The philosophy of Heraclitus, a world in flux, a world without objective reality is brought up, and that's really an underlying concern through all of this because Plato of course believes in an objective world of ideas. Imagine a language that has broken off from a solid core of ideas, flowing away from them over a slick layer of ambiguity. This is the concern, and I get it. I understand the importance of clear definitions, but when people like the Sophists start wandering into relativism or nihilism, I don't think it's the language that we ought to blame.
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Apr 02, 2021 Rory Fox rated it really liked it

Shelves: philosophy

The Cratylus is one of the harder dialogues because of its content and style. This is a welcome ‘new’ translation (albet 20 years old) which provides a very helpful introduction and notes.

Ancient texts like this can be found free on the internet, as the vast majority were translated during the Victorian era. Paying for an up to date edition is definitely worth it in this case, as the detailed introduction contextualises the characters and themes. It also explains what might otherwise seem a rat The Cratylus is one of the harder dialogues because of its content and style. This is a welcome ‘new’ translation (albet 20 years old) which provides a very helpful introduction and notes.

Ancient texts like this can be found free on the internet, as the vast majority were translated during the Victorian era. Paying for an up to date edition is definitely worth it in this case, as the detailed introduction contextualises the characters and themes. It also explains what might otherwise seem a rather inconclusive conclusion.

Editorial help is particularly important with this book as it contains long etymologies, which were no doubt witty and insightful to its original ancient Greek audience. Modern English speakers will struggle to see the relevance of some of it.

To compound the difficulties this book is also one in which Plato is content to leave matters less resolved. Readers have to do some work to pull threads together for themselves.

The theme of this dialogue is Philosophy of Language and the issue of whether words have an essential link to what they are ascribed. This is a fascinating topic in itself but it also raises issues about the very nature of philosophy itself. If Philosophers are going to spend time analysing words, this will tell them nothing about reality unless there is some special link between words and the things they apply to. If words are entirely arbitrary, then is there really any point spending time analysing them?

In the modern era we have largely settled on the conventional and arbitrary nature of words, so a core element of modern philosophy is analysing the significance of those conventions. But the same issues of essential or abritrary linkages crop up in debates about 'ideas.' We use words to talk and think about things, but the content in our head when we are doing it are ‘ideas.’ The same issues of the Cratylus arise again with 'ideas.' Are our ideas true and right representations of things, or are they entirely arbitrary? Answering the question in either way leads to different, ongoing sets of philosophical problems which philosophers are still discussing.

This is an important text, which is well presented in this translation. Ideally I would have appreciated a little more introductory material, especially setting the Cratylus into the history of its varying uses and interpretations. Nevertheless this is a solid text from which readers will be able to engage with Plato’s thought.
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Feb 26, 2021 Joel Martin rated it liked it

Naturally, and somewhat ironically considering the content of the dialogue, this would be a much more mind-blowing read if one spoke Greek. However, considering how much of the English language comes from the Greek routes, it is 100% worth it to wade through Socrates' etymological flexing. Anyway, all of that is less important than the spectacular discussion concerning the meaning of language, the difference between the sign and the signified, the possibility of truly knowing a thing, and the qu ...more

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Oct 22, 2015 ROC rated it liked it · review of another edition

How do some strings of noise come to have meaning while others do not?
To tackle this problem is to understand the fundamental workings and structure of language, and from there grasp meaning itself. The most popular theory is that we choose a specific sound and agree upon a meaning, one we share for a given subject.

Plato considers this in the Cratylus, named after a radical follower of Heraclitus who famously said that because of constant flux we can't even step into the same river once. The tw

Plato considers this in the Cratylus, named after a radical follower of Heraclitus who famously said that because of constant flux we can't even step into the same river once. The two other characters in this dialogue are Socrates and Hermogenes. When the dialogue begins, Hermogenes and Cratylus have already been arguing about words and their meaning. Hermogenes believes that any sound can have meaning attached to it, and with convention the name sticks. Cratylus disagrees, saying words are given meaning through nature.
So the argument revolves around the question: does each thing have a word for it which is correct by nature, or can anything be called by whatever word we want just by convention? Socrates enters the discussion by refuting Hermogenes’ conventional view with the points made by Cratylus who thinks everything has a correct or a true name. His reason is that, to use language is nothing but uttering the correct word or expression for what you are thinking about. A word in the proper sense is just an expression meaning what you’d like to say. So in his view there is no such thing as using language falsely.

Socrates compares words to tools, saying they both contain function being made for specific tasks. But wouldn’t that mean that sounds, like tools, can’t be used for any task that took our fancy? So how do we discern the proper words for real things? Socrates says the right word for something should somehow reveal its nature, and this he thinks is what Homer must have thought when composing his poetry. One quotation from the Iliad says that a river has one name used by the gods, and another used by humans. So Homer must have believed that the gods were using the true name, while humans used another because they lack a true understanding of the world.

If words really did reveal the nature of things, then we could discover the nature of things by producing etymologies of their correct names. However there are several problems with this. First of all, foreign words have crept into language, so no etymology is possible in these cases. Even worse for Socrates, the Greek of the 5th century BC more than likely experienced this change as well. Letters or syllables may also have been added or subtracted from certain words, so in some cases we may have to remove letters to discover the correct etymology. But there’s a bigger problem here. If I etymologise the word for health by saying that it's based on the word for 'wholeness', then why is the word for 'wholeness' necessarily a correct word? Each words meaning seems to simply be a function of the meanings of the words upon which it is based. So what makes any of those words revelatory of the natures of things? To stop this regress Socrates suggests there is a way for words to be natural representations or likenesses of the things they refer to, and this is onomatopoeia. He argues that if we take this idea seriously, we'll see that when words were originally bestowed upon things, the people who gave them were expressing certain ideas on the nature of things. An example he gives is of the Greek letter ῥῶ (rho) which is supposed to signify rapid change because the tongue vibrates when pronouncing it. More examples are given of this onomatopoeic code are given, and Socrates shows how the ancients used etymologies to create new words. Yet, even though this codifies meaning into language, it doesn't necessarily mean that the meaning is true, and this is the argument Socrates uses to refute Cratylus.

So far Socrates has been refuting Hermogenes' theory that language is entirely conventional. But now he points out to Cratylus that language may not be entirely natural either. Cratylus' argument comes into trouble with the corruption of words I mentioned earlier. Sometimes a letter may be added or removed from a word to make it easier to say, and when this happens people are still able to use the word to communicate meaning. So it can't be the case that true natural words function as words, there must also be a role for convention. Socrates thus takes a middle view between Hermogenes and Cratylus, words have their meaning both by nature and convention. So it's no surprise he rejects the most radical idea of Cratylus, namely that it's impossible to speak falsely, because a word must have meaning for the thing which it is about. Socrates suggested with his idea of onomatopoeia that words are likenesses of the things they mean. But with any likeness there is always going to be a mismatch between a thing and the representation of the thing. Similarly, it must be possible for me to apply a word to the wrong thing. The falsehood occurs because of a mismatch between the representation and what it is meant to represent. Words are mismatched with the things they are supposed to represent.

Thus by taking a middle ground between the conventionalism and naturalism, Socrates preserves two possible functions of language:

-Language conveys intention, and for this convention seems to be enough.
-Words may be able to reveal the natures of things.

Yet, even though meaning may be coded in language, it doesn't necessarily mean that the meaning is true. To learn whether it is true, we need to do something more than analyse the words assigned to the things around us. We need to understand whether the principles that guided that process are the right ones. But to have the correct principles for a word such as beauty, there needs to be a meaning which is not constantly shifting, otherwise we don’t have tangible knowledge of the actual thing itself, just reference points.

With both sides discussed, the dialogue ends with Socrates using the forms to refute the Heraclitean concept of language as flux. Though heavy-handed, with this dialogue Plato cements his position as the first pioneering genius of the philosophy of language (two millennia before any major interest would be taken in the subject).

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Feb 18, 2018 Siu Hong rated it it was amazing

Shelves: philosophy, favorites

It is a difficult work, but I really enjoyed reading it.

During my investigation of the rule-following section of Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigation, I came across one paper by Paul Livingston saying that Plato's Cratylus anticipates the Wittgensteinian discussion. Of course, there is a difference between an earlier work anticipating another later work in philosopher, and an earlier work being relevant to the contemporary discussion. I picked up this book and realised that there are indee ...more

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Sep 17, 2020 Julia Novaes rated it liked it

The first part can't all be gibberish. There are some things Socrates mentions in passing, without further investigation but as premises for the absurd etymologies, which are "Platonic common sense": that desire is a shackle, that the soul separated from the body is more susceptible to desiring virtue, that the good man is a daimonic man etc. Of these, some which might be worth investigating are the ones similar – including in phrasing – to things said in the Phaedrus: the soul as prime mover an ...more

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Jul 14, 2021 tps rated it it was ok

After pages and pages of spurious 5th century etymologies, I wish in this case that philistines like Karl Popper were correct in their estimation of Plato being a proto-Stalinist, but unfortunately for the defender of the so called “Open Society”, Stalin’s Marxism and Problems of Linguistics has very little in common with this dialogue. The only redeemable trait here is the practically comedic stubbornness of Cratylus in his fixation on the impossibility of falsity in speech:

CRATYLUS: In my view ...more

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Mar 02, 2021 Emily rated it liked it

I hate that I actually ended up liking this book a lot. A was debating giving it 4 stars instead of 3, but I just found the middle chunk of this book so boring and tedious. There was just WAY too much time spent explaining various word origins. I would think that Socrates would finally be done explaining word origins and then Hermogenes would go: "But Socrates, what about these other ten words???" Ugh.... the whole middle of this book was a complete drag. If you want to read 50 pages dedicated t ...more

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Oct 29, 2019 Eduard Lev rated it liked it

There is certainly a lot to be said about the concept of naming. Plato attempts to frame the discourse as an argument: are names arbitrary and chosen only by convention, or is there always a single, true name that captures the essence of the thing it is describing?

The reality is that the answer is unclear. Plato touches on arguments in support of both. Most of this argument is based on discussing the etymology of Greek names, including those of the gods. We must take the translators at their wo ...more

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Sep 22, 2020 Mario rated it it was amazing

This work alone, should be reason enough to study and learn the Greek Language. It is very unfortunate that even the best translation will not do this work justice.

I read the book in English and it is impossible to capture the purpose why Plato wrote it. Words in Greek are not just a bundle of letters. it is much more than that. and diving into the analysis of words and their origins and their meanings, takes you to a whole new world of understanding.
Words are synthetic of primary words which ...more

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Sep 28, 2019 Joshua Dew rated it it was amazing

Fascinating philological dialogue focusing on the deities, philosophical and scientific terms. Socrates' analogy of the use of hand gestures to communicate the "essence" of a word was especially helpful toward understanding verbal development since my wife is a sign language interpreter. Some ASL signs obviously represent a recognizable quality of an object or action, whereas others seem to have no such qualitative relationship. Also, in the dialogue, there's some epistemology of the primary ess ...more

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Oct 26, 2017 Geoffreyjen rated it liked it

Shelves: philosophy-theology-spiritual

Cratylus is about the process of naming things, and the manner of setting about doing this. As always, Plato's style is compelling, but he lived in a time and a culture where the meaning of personal names was reflected in the names themselves. This is not often the case today, and so the logic of his argument loses some of its force. However, the idea that knowing the name of something gives us power over the thing is an old idea with a long and fascinating history, and Plato's book speaks to th ...more

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About Plato

Plato

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(Greek: Πλάτων) (Arabic: أفلاطون) (Alternate Spelling: Platon, Platón, Platone)
Plato is a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the foundations of Western p ...more

Books by Plato

The Trial and Death of Socrates (Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo)

Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Meno, Phaedo

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Finding the 1,000 Books to Read in a Lifetime

We all have our reading bucket lists. James Mustich's 1,000 Books to Read Before You Die is bound to seriously expand that list...

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Quotes from Cratylus

“Everything changes and nothing remains still.” — 8 likes

“There have been times, Socrates, when I have been driven in my perplexity to take refuge with Protagoras; not that I agree with him at all.” — 1 likes

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About Plato

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