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Books

Plato’s Cratylus: The Comedy of Language by S.M. Ewegen

Roger Caldwell talks about Plato’s views on language.

Because Plato (c.428-348 BC) stands at the head of the Western philosophical tradition, and because he is such an essential part of our philosophical canon, it is easy to assume that the problems he addresses are the same as ours. However, given that nearly two-and-a-half millennia separate him from us, and that the society in which he wrote was very different from our own, it is advisable to stand back a little – to first try to understand what his work is actually saying before we too quickly move to make it answerable to our concerns. This is especially true of Plato’s ‘aporetic’ [‘impasse’] dialogues, in which various questions are raised and answers suggested which on examination do not work out and we are left in a cloud of perplexity at the end, with nothing settled. The Cratylus is one of the most enigmatic of these dialogues, not least because we sense that for much of the time Socrates – Plato’s mouthpiece in his dialogues – is speaking tongue in cheek, and it is often not clear when he (that is, Plato) is in earnest.

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