An Interpretation of Plato's "Cratylus"Author(s): Simon KellerSource: Phronesis, Vol. 45, No. 4 (Nov., 2000), pp. 284-305Published by: BRILLStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4182654Accessed: 11/03/2009 03:02

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An Interpretation of Plato's Cratylus

SIMON KELLER

ABSTRACT Plato's main concern in the Cratylus, I claim, is to argue against the idea that we can learn about things by examining their names, and in favour of the claim that philosophers should, so far as possible, look to the things themselves. Other philosophical questions, such as that of whether we should accept a naturalist or a conventionalist theory of namng, arise in the dialogue, but are subordinate. This reading of the Cratylus, I say, explains certain puzzling facts about the dialogue's structure and dramatic emphasis, as well as making the dialogue look better on philosophical grounds. In support of my claim, I argue that Hermogenes' con- ventionalist theory of naming is quite sensible, and is not refuted by Socrates; that the main purpose of the etymological section is to undermine our confidence in etymology as a form of philosophical enquiry; and that the apparently tan- gential and inconclusive discussions in the final section of the dialogue are best understood as illustrations of Plato's thesis about philosophical methodology.

There was once a BBC radio show on which celebrity guests were chal- lenged to produce spontaneous etymologies of common English words. A guest on the show is asked to explain the origin of the word 'gold'. "Ah yes", she quickly replies, "this word has its origin in the venerable cus- tom of giving gold watches as gifts to retiring employees. When a cere- mony was held to honour a retiring worker, the manager of the company would present him or her with a timepiece made of the as-yet-unnamed substance. As the watch was passed over, the manager would whisper in the ear of the former employee, 'Gee, you're old'. As time passed, the rit- ualised phrase was shortened to, 'Gee, old', and then, 'Gold'. Eventually, people began referring to 'gold watches', and so 'gold' became the name of the material from which the watches were made".

I suppose that the guest's story supports a conventionalist theory of names, because it says that it was only because of an historical accident that gold became 'gold'. Then again, it might support a naturalist theory, because it reveals the close relation between the name 'gold' and the proper function of the named substance. In any case, the story teaches us nothing whatsoever about the nature of gold, and that's not just because it is so obviously fanciful. The etymology may be creative and clever -

conceivably, it might even be true - but if we are interested in learning about the substance gold, as opposed to the way in which we talk about

? Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2000 Phronesis XLV14

AN INTERPRETATION OF PLATO'S CRATYLUS 285

it, then we should not be trying to come up with etymologies. This, I want to suggest, is the primary message of the Cratylus.

I'll offer a reading of the Cratylus according to which the guiding theme of the dialogue is Plato's attack upon etymology as a form of philosoph- ical inquiry. Other philosophical questions come up, but they are subor- dinate. In particular, I will say, commentators have overestimated the extent to which the Cratylus is concerned with the question of the cor- rectness of names - the question of whether names come to be correct through convention, or by virtue of standing in some more profound rela- tionship to the things that they name. A certain answer to this question is presupposed by those who employ the etymological method, and it is in this capacity, I claim, that the question arises in the Cratylus. Rather than setting out to resolve the debate between conventionalist and naturalist theories of names, Plato engages in the debate just to the extent required by his defence of his own way of doing philosophy.

There are two broad considerations that recommend this reading. First, it offers an improved understanding of Plato's dramatic emphasis. It is espe- cially helpful, I will argue, in explaining why the etymological section is so long, and why the dialogue ends as it does. Second, the interpreta- tion that I will defend makes the Cratylus a better piece of philosophy. Plato soundly refutes the claim that etymologies are valuable philoso- phical tools, but the debate between naturalism and conventionalism is not satisfactorily settled. Further, when Socrates has the resources avail- able to dispose completely of a certain form of naturalism, he declines to do so. This suggests, I think, that it is not some theory of names that Plato is really after.

In support of my interpretation of the dialogue, I have three claims to defend. First, Hermogenes' conventionalist theory of naming is not at all absurd, and Socrates does not come close to refuting it. Second, the main purpose of the etymological section is to undermine our confidence in ety- mology as a form of philosophical enquiry. Third, the final section of the dialogue does not resolve, and is not intended to resolve, the question of the correctness of names, nor is it a direct attack upon Heraclitus and the doctrine that all is in flux; rather, the purpose of the final section is to make explicit the problems with etymology that have been gestured at in the previous parts of the dialogue. Only the third of these claims, by the way, is new, although they are all controversial.' I will try to show how they can be put together to yield a unified view of the dialogue.

Accepted February 2000 ' The first claim has been recently defended by Rachel Barney; see her 'Plato on

286 SIMON KELLER

1. Hermogenes' Conventionalism

The Cratylus opens with the appearance of a disgruntled Hermogenes, frustrated in his efforts to elicit from Cratylus an explanation of the nat- ural correctness of names. Cratylus is said to believe that there is a cor- rect name for each thing, and that this correctness holds regardless of the naming practices actually in play and regardless of whether one is a speaker of Greek or of some other language. Hermogenes is intrigued by the theory, but cannot see how it could be true. No one has been able to convince him that "the correctness of names is determined by anything besides convention and agreement" (383d).2

Under questioning from Socrates, Hermogenes accepts, as consequences of his view, that any name given to a thing is a correct name, that any new name that we give is as correct as the old, and that if a person chooses to give several names to a single thing, then all those names are names of that thing. In particular, Hermogenes agrees that if a person uni- laterally decides to apply the name 'horse' to the thing that we presently call 'man', then the same thing will have the public name 'man' and the private name 'horse' (383a). Pressed further, Hermogenes confesses to having sometimes felt that his doctrine pushes him towards the Pro- tagorean claim that "things are for each person as he believes them to be", although he would like to avoid this extreme relativism if he possibly can (386c).

Some critics of the Cratylus have claimed that Hermogenes' version of conventionalism is crude and untenable. Bernard Williams, for example, calls Hermogenes' theory the "radical Humpty-Dumpty view", and says that it can be rejected in favour of a more sensible conventionalist the- ory.3 The thought is that Hermogenes takes things too far when he allows all private namings to be legitimate, and that it is because of this mistake that he cannot discriminate between true and false ways of speaking.4 If

Conventionalism', Phronesis XLII/2, 1997, pp. 143-162. The second claim receives its best and most complete defence in Timothy M.S. Baxter, The Cratylus: Plato's Critique of Naming, Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1992. Some critics of these claims are discussed below.

2 All references to Plato are to Plato, Cratylus, translated by C.D.C. Reeve, in John M. Cooper (ed.), Plato: Complete Works, Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997.

1 Bernard Williams, 'Cratylus' theory of names and its refutation', in Malcolm Schofield and Martha Nussbaum (eds.), Language and Logos, Cambridge, 1982, p. 90. See also Baxter, The Cratylus: Plato's Critique of Naming, pp. 17-22. Other defend- ers of this view of Hermogenes are surveyed in Barney, pp. 143-145.

4 Talk of private acts of naming, of course, brings to mind Wittgenstein's argu- ments against the possibility of a private language. As far as I can tell, however, Wittgenstein's worries do not apply to the sorts of cases that concern us here (and

AN INTERPRETATION OF PLATO'S CRATYLUS 287

we think of Hermogenes' position in this way, then we can see the argu- ments that Socrates brings against it as arguments against a particular, misguided form of conventionalism, rather than conventionalism as a gen- eral theoretical approach. Then, when Socrates argues against naturalism at the end of the dialogue, we can say that he is endorsing the more sophisticated conventionalist theory that most of us, after all, believe.

A more sympathetic view is offered by Rachel Barney. Hermogenes' theory, Barney argues, is "a comparatively reflective and plausible" way of defending the idea that all the names we actually use are correct, and "his legitimation of private naming is merely an unavoidable corollary to this defence".5 If this is right, then the consequences that Hermogenes sees for his account are consequences that any conventionalist might have to face. Before trying to adjudicate between the two interpretations of Hermogenes' theory, it will be worth saying a little more about what the conventionalist theory of language amounts to.

David Lewis is a contemporary conventionalist, arguing that it is just convention that makes words correct and keeps languages alive (Lewis does not claim to tell us how languages originate).6 A language, accord- ing to Lewis, is "something which assigns meanings to certain strings of types of sounds or marks", and which does so in an arbitrary way.7 The assignments are arbitrary because there are many different ways in which sounds could be assigned to meanings, none of which is intrinsically bet- ter than the others. English, for example, assigns the same meaning to 'dog' as French assigns to 'chien', but it could just have easily have been the other way around; if we English speakers used 'chien' instead of 'dog', we would be no worse off and no less correct.

On Lewis's theory, the question of which strings of sounds are assigned to which meanings within a given community - the question of which lan- guage the community uses - is settled through an ongoing cooperative process. All members of the community have an interest in there being a

critics have not, as far as I know, used such worries to criticise Hermogenes). Hermogenes is not thinking of an individual whose language exists only in her mind, but of very small and unstable linguistic communities. Conceivably, this community might con- tain only one person; as David Lewis suggests in a slightly different context, "we might think of the situation as one in which a convention prevails in the population of dif- ferent time-slices of the same man". See David Lewis, 'Languages and Language', in David Lewis, Philosophical Papers, Oxford, 1983, p. 182.

5 Barney, p. 146. 6Lewis, p. 181.

Lewis, p. 163.

288 SIMON KELLER

single prevailing language, and so they all conform to what they take to be the governing linguistic laws. Members of the community regularly produce sentences that they believe to be true according to the dominant language, and they trust that those around them are doing the same, and so a single language is spoken within the community.8 The essential con- ventionalist claims are, first, that there exist several alternative languages that any community could equally well adopt, and, second, that the mem- bers of a community cooperate to ensure that some language - any lan- guage - is dominant.

If we take Lewis's theory to represent sensible contemporary conven- tionalism, then we can assess the reasonableness of Hermogenes' position by looking for points at which the two theories diverge. They will agree that "no name belongs to a particular thing by nature, but only because of the rules and usage of those who establish the usage and call it by that name", and they will agree that when a community takes up a new name for something, the new way of speaking is no less correct than the old (384d). Things become less clear when we consider the giving of names by individuals, rather than by communities. Should a sensible conven- tionalist agree with Hermogenes' assertion that any name given is a cor- rect name, even if it is not backed up by a public convention? Should he agree that a single thing could have the public name 'man' and the pri- vate name 'horse'?

There is a restricted sense in which the conventionalist view does allow us to say that a certain instance of name-giving is incorrect. When an indi- vidual decides to call a man 'horse', we can say that she is incorrectly naming the man because she is not using the name that has by public con- vention been designated the relevant meaning; she has an interest, we assume, in communicating with those around her, and so she makes a mis- take when she compromises her ability to do so. This, however, is as far as our criticism can go. When the recalcitrant name-giver replies that she doesn't care about our conventions (and if she did she wouldn't be assign- ing alternative names), we are left with no grounds on which to criticise her. There is nothing beyond our convention that makes 'man' the right name and 'horse' the wrong name, so there is nothing about our choice of name that is intrinsically better than hers. Perhaps we could try to con- vince her that she should follow our convention because it is in her best interests that a single language prevail, but we might be wrong about- this. If we think hard enough, we can imagine the existence of an indi-

I Lewis, p. 167.

AN INTERPRETATION OF PLATO'S CRATYLUS 289

vidual so perverse that she has no interest in being part of a public lin- guistic community.

Within the boundaries of our linguistic community, it is correct to call a man 'man', but within the boundaries of the deviant name-giver's very small linguistic community, it is correct to call a man 'horse'. The deviant language, in its limited sphere, is just as correct as ours. When someone decides to call a man 'horse', she is not wrong in any absolute sense. She is wrong according to our rules, but she has no reason to pay attention to our rules if it doesn't suit her to do so.

Conventionalism tells us that there is no standard of correctness against which different instances of name-giving can be judged, but it does not, as Barney points out, force us to say that every use of every name is cor- rect. "On Hermogenes' view", Barney says, "one names incorrectly in using a name in a way which does not accord with the relevant baptism: the name-inverter who decides to call humans 'horses' and vice versa gets something wrong if he subsequently uses the names in the ordinary way."9 If someone generally does speak in accordance with the rules of a lin- guistic community, then he, unlike the person who resolves always to call a man 'horse', is subject to those rules and makes a mistake when he fails to follow them.

The conventionalist can make use of the distinction between baptism and usage. Put roughly, we are using a name when we are employing it in order to evoke some meaning that we take the name to already pos- sess, and we are baptising when we are engaged in activities which are intended to make it the case that a certain name has a certain meaning. Now, in those rare cases in which a baptism consists simply in an announcement - "I hereby name this carrot 'Hercules"' - the distinction is clear. In other cases, words enter a language gradually and their ori- gins are hazy, and the distinction between baptism and usage is not a sharp one. Nevertheless, the distinction is there, and the conventionalist's point is that while baptisms are answerable only to some very liberal stan- dards (I'll describe them shortly), there are strict rules governing the use of a name by someone who aspires to conform to a certain baptism. For those of us who almost always speak in accordance with a public con- vention, and who realise that it is in our interests to maintain that con- vention, the standards of our linguistic community are the standards to which we can legitimately be held.

I Barney, p. 153 (her italics).

290 SIMON KELLER

On what we have seen so far, Hermogenes' conventionalism is neither radical nor absurd. He accepts that every baptism is as correct as every other, but this is a natural implication of the conventionalist theory. The cases that he considers are those in which it is decided that a certain thing should be given a new name, so these are all cases of baptism. There is no indication that Hermogenes is committed to the stronger claim that no use of a name can ever be wrong, and there is no reason why he, as a conventionalist, should be forced to make such a claim. Hermogenes is not the 'anything goes' conventionalist that some have taken him to be.

The second reason why Hermogenes' theory might be thought absurd is that it leads him towards Protagorean relativism. Socrates brings this possibility to our attention, and Hermogenes admits that it concerns him. We are not told why this is a danger for Hermogenes, but I suppose that the worry is something like this. Anything can be given any name, so when I say that the grass is 'green' and you say that it is 'blue', neither of us is really wrong. The colour of the grass is equally 'green' and 'blue'; it doesn't matter what you call it. But then the grass is 'green' for me and 'blue' for you, so its essence is not something fixed and independent of us. Whatever we say or think about the grass is, from one point of view, correct. No-one is any wiser than anyone else. All my beliefs are correct for me, and all your beliefs are correct for you.

This is not a good argument. If the conventionalist is careful to dis- tinguish sounds from their meanings, and if she remembers that the mean- ings of sounds are fixed under any conventional language, then she need not become a relativist about being. The grass is green, and that is an absolute, mind-independent fact. We could have called green 'blue', but then when we said that the grass is 'blue' we would be meaning what we mean now when we say that the grass is 'green'. Meanings are fixed absolutely, the conventionalist can say, but names are not. Once it has been established by convention that green is named 'green', it is incor- rect for people who are subject to that convention to say that the grass is 'blue'. A speaker of English who believes that the grass is 'blue' is wrong, and a speaker of English who believes that the grass is 'green' is right; all beliefs are not equal. There may be some instances in which it is difficult to tell whether a speaker has an incorrect belief or is speak- ing a different language, but this difficulty is merely practical. Hermo- genes can be a conventionalist about language but an absolutist about being.

AN INTERPRETATION OF PLATO'S CRATYLUS 291

2. Socrates' Arguments Against Conventionalism

I have suggested that Hermogenes' conventionalism is not absurd and does not lead to Protagorean relativism. Under this view, the arguments that Socrates gives against Hermogenes assume a new importance. If Socrates refutes Hermogenean conventionalism, then he refutes the conventional- ism that many of us would like to maintain.

Socrates gives three arguments. Here's the first. "Things have some fixed being or essence of their own", and an action is a type of thing. Speaking is a type of action, so there is a way of speaking that accords with that action's fixed essence. So a speaker "will accomplish something and suc- ceed in speaking if he says things in the natural way to say them, in the natural way for them to be said, and with the natural tool for saying them" (386e-387c). The conclusion is that there is some particular way of speak- ing that is natural, and hence correct, and so conventionalism is wrong.

Hermogenes goes along with this argument, but he doesn't have to. We can make a distinction between two types of linguistic correctness; a language can be correct because it gives the right names or because it names the right things. With regard to the first sort of correctness, the con- ventionalist can say that there exist only the loosest of standards. Names have a purpose, and in order to meet that purpose they should not be so long or so difficult to pronounce as to make communication difficult. But these standards fall far short of requiring of each particular thing that it be given a particular name. With regard to the second sort of correctness, some more stringent standards can be endorsed. For example, the con- ventionalist can say, we act in accordance with the natural divisions of being when we give a single name to the class of all mammals, but we would be acting against those natural divisions if we gave a single name to the class of all mammals, orange things and eating utensils. These things are not connected in nature, so they should not be connected by a name. It is naturally correct, the conventionalist can say, to give a name to the class of mammals, but there is no particular name that it is natu- rally correct to give.

In reply to Socrates, Hermogenes should agree that naming is an action with a fixed essence, but only to the extent that there are natural rules that say which things should be brought under the same name. Hermogenes should add that there are no natural rules that tell us what those names are to be. If the claim that all actions have a natural correctness is sup- posed to include the act of assigning particular sounds to meanings, then Socrates' premise begs the question against conventionalism. This is one

292 SIMON KELLER

type of action, according to the conventionalist, which does not have a fixed essence.

Socrates' second argument is this. Some statements are true and some statements are false. If a statement is true, then all of its parts are true, and if a statement is false, then at least one of its parts is false. But a name is the smallest part of a statement, so it must be possible to say a true or a false name. So some names are true and some names are false, contrary to conventionalism (385b2-dl).

I cannot see how this can be made into a good argument."' Richard Robinson dismisses it as a fallacy of division, claiming that names do not in fact have truth-values." Names certainly do not have truth-values in the way that sentences do, and it seems wrong to say that the truth-value of an atomic sentence like 'Socrates is wise' is somehow derived from the truth-values of its parts. As far as I can tell, this argument should not sway the conventionalist, and Hermogenes would have been within his rights to reject it.

The third argument is similar to the first. When we name, we name with something, so a name is a sort of tool. "Just as a shuttle is a tool for dividing warp and woof, a name is a tool for giving instruction, that is to say, for dividing being" (388b). Now, a good shuttle is one that is made to best perform the tasks naturally required of a shuttle, and it takes an expert carpenter to produce such a tool. In the same way, then, a good name will be a tool that is naturally suited to the task of dividing being, and such a thing could only be produced by a rule-setter who knows "how to embody in sounds and syllables the name naturally suited to each thing" (387c-389d). So there are natural names for things, and it takes an expert to determine what they are.

Like Robinson, I think that this "is not so much an argument as a free development of the nature-theory on the assumption that a name is a tool like a shuttle".'2 The conventionalist can say that a name is a tool, but not a particularly specialised tool. A name is like a paper-weight. A paper- weight is a tool with an important function, but it need not be made by an expert craftsman; if the paper-weight conforms to the undemanding standards of having one flat surface and a size and weight within a certain

'0 Baxter surveys some attempts to find a better argument in this passage. See Baxter, pp. 34-36.

" Richard Robinson, 'A Criticism of Plato's Cratylus', The Philosophical Review LXV:3, July 1956, p. 328.

12 Robinson, p. 329.

AN INTERPRETATION OF PLATO'S CRATYLUS 293

generous range, then it will do its job perfectly well. In the same way, a name has a very important function, and there are some requirements that apply to its creation. It should not be too long, it should not be too difficult to pronounce and it should divide being in the way in which being is actu- ally divided. Like the paper-weight, however, the specific shape and con- stituting material of the name are not important. Whatever the particular (pronounceable) sounds that make up the name, it will do the job. Once again, Hermogenes can resist Socrates' argument by denying his premise. A name is a tool, but it is not a tool like a shuttle.

I have argued that Hermogenes' view of names is not outlandish, and that it is not refuted by Socrates' criticisms. I will shortly come to the question of why Plato might have placed the arguments in the dialogue. But, given that they are there, why does Hermogenes submit to them so readily? Because his own theory is not fully worked-out, because he lacks the confidence to defend it against Socrates' sophisticated attack, and be- cause a defiant Hermogenes would have been of no use to Plato.

Hermogenes is a common-sense conventionalist, but he is not quite cer- tain of the implications of his own theory. While he realises that he needs to respect the private names given by individuals, he regards such names as legitimate only because he "can't conceive of any other way in which names could be correct" (385d). And while he wants to deny relativism about being, he is not sure whether this denial is consistent with his con- ventionalism. We should also remember that Hermogenes is eager to learn; he is frustrated by Cratylus' unwillingness to talk and he is keen to hear the opinions of Socrates (384a). The text makes clear Hermogenes' status as an intellectual apprentice. Further, Socrates' argumentative tactic is to proceed by stealth, eliciting Hermogenes' agreement to premises that sound reasonable but in fact presuppose the naturalist theory of names. It is not all that surprising that Hermogenes, with his under-developed theory and his desire to hear his teacher's opinions, fails see through Socrates' arguments.

There is also a dramatic reason for having Hermogenes submit to nat- uralism. In the next part of the dialogue, Socrates will explore the possi- bilities of an etymological investigation into the nature of reality. No one who believes that names are based purely on convention is going to take such an investigation seriously, and so a conventionalist Hermogenes would hardly be a cooperative interlocutor. But as a willing young stu- dent who has recently come to believe in the natural correctness of names, Hermogenes makes for an ideal Socratic adversary. He is open-minded, thinking on his feet, and ready to go where Socrates leads him.

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Still, the assertion that Plato deliberately gives Socrates five pages worth of bad arguments does sound a little desperate. Baxter claims that Socrates' arguments point towards a prescriptive theory of naming, ac- cording to which baptisms should be informed by the philosopher's insights into the natures of the things named. While this alternative to thorough- going conventionalism receives only a rough sketch, says Baxter, there is reason to believe that Plato found the theory plausible.'3 This may well be true (and I will later suggest that something like this theory may be in Socrates' mind in the last section of the dialogue). The failure to fully articulate this theory, however, together with the poor quality of the argu- ments advanced in its favour, suggests that Plato's central concern is else- where. Plato may be toying with a form of naturalism, and he may think that there is something in Socrates' arguments against conventionalism. What really matters, though, is that the arguments are presented in such a way as to convince Hermogenes, and to leave him primed for the ety- mologies to follow.

3. The Etymologies

When he is asked at the beginning of the dialogue to speak about the correctness of names, Socrates says, "To be sure, if I'd attended Prodicus' fifty-drachma lecture course... there'd be nothing to prevent you from learning the precise truth about the correctness of names straightaway. But as I've heard only the one-drachma course, I don't know the truth about it" (384b). As the etymological section begins, Socrates tells Hermogenes that, if he wants to learn about the correctness of names, "the most cor- rect way is together with people who already know, but you must pay them well and show gratitude besides - these are the sophists" (391b). Socrates claims to have no special knowledge in this area, but he is prepared to see what an amateur examination might achieve. The strong suggestion, however, is that he will be examining not just the hidden meanings that lie behind names, but the pretensions of those who demand large sums of money for their opinions on the subject.

Socrates' investigation into the correctness of names begins on what is taken to be relatively safe ground. In the Homeric legends, we find that the same river is called 'Skamandros' by humans and 'Xanthos' by the gods, so it seems likely that 'Xanthos' is closer to being the correct name (391d-392a). We also find that Hector's son was called 'Astyanax' by the

't See Baxter, ch. 2.

AN INTERPRETATION OF PLATO'S CRATYLUS 295

men of Troy, but 'Skamandrios' by the women, and to Socrates this is good evidence that 'Astyanax' is correct. Indeed, there is a certain appro- priateness about 'Astyanax', because it means 'lord of the city', and this is a fitting description of Hector's son (392b-e). Socrates goes on to pro- duce a number of etymologies of this sort, becoming less and less rigorous as he progresses. 'Atreus' can be thought to mean 'stubbornness', 'bold- ness' or 'destructiveness', any of which is appropriate (395b). 'Tantalus' may be a corruption of 'Talantatos', which means, fittingly, 'Most-weighed-upon' (395d-e).

The etymologies continue. Claiming to be working under Euthyphro's apparently mystical inspiration, Socrates is able to etymologise anything. Many of his explanations sound quite reasonable, and may well be his- torically correct (in that they tell the true story of how a name was coined), but some strike the reader as clearly fanciful. When he seems about to run into trouble over 'anthropoi', he tells us to "bear in mind the following point about names: we often add letters or take them out and change the accents as well, thus swerving aside from what we want to name" (399a). Having given himself permission to rearrange letters and accents, Socrates is able to say that 'anthr6poi' in fact comes from the appropriate 'anathr6n ha opoe' (398e-399c).

Another useful tactic is introduced in order to solve a difficulty over 'pur', the Greek name for 'fire'. Rather than providing an etymology for the word, Socrates suggests that it has been imported from some foreign land, and that this excuses him from finding an explanation of its cor- rectness (409d-410a). This device arises again when Socrates finds him- self unable to explain the origin of 'kakon'; he simply says that it must have a foreign origin and saves himself the trouble (416a).

Reaching the end of his examination of names whose correctness can be explained in terms of the meanings of their parts, Socrates observes that "if someone asks about the terms from which a name is formed, and then about the ones from which those terms are formed, and keeps on doing this indefinitely, the answerer must finally give up" (421d-e). To break the infinite regress, we are going to have to introduce some way of explaining those names which are "the elements of all the other statements and names". "For, if these are indeed elements, it cannot be right to sup- pose that they are composed out of other names" (422a). The point is that a derivative name can only be a natural name if the primary names of which it is comprised are themselves natural, and so there must be some way of telling what it means for a primary name to be naturally correct.

A primary name is correct, Socrates says, if it imitates the thing that it

296 SIMON KELLER

names (423b). This imitation cannot be an imitation of the sound that a thing makes, because that would mean that those who make animal noises are naming the animals (423c). (Such a view would also have trouble explaining how we could name things like colours, which do not make any noise.) Primary names should rather imitate "the being or essence that each thing has", and this will not be a matter of simply reproducing a sound (423e).

After saying that his views on primary names seem, even to him, to be "outrageous and absurd", Socrates suggests a way in which a word may be an imitation of the essence of a thing (426b). He gives a number of cases in which a primary name seems to be natural because the essence of the named thing is imitated by the tongue or mouth when the letters that make up the word are pronounced. The letter 'r', for example, is used to signify motion, because the tongue is at its most agitated when pro- nouncing this sound. '1' is an appropriate component of the Greek words for 'glide' and 'smooth' and 'sleek', because the tongue glides across the mouth as it produces the sound (426e-427b). The long etymological sec- tion ends with Socrates' brief and uncritical exposition of these ideas about the correctness of primary names. His putative theory will scruti- nised in the following discussion with Cratylus.

By the time that Cratylus enters the dialogue, we have been given sev- eral reasons to be suspicious of the etymological project. There can be several etymologies for the one name. If there is no obvious explanation of the origin of some name, then the etymologist can just explain the cor- rectness of a similar word and say that the name that we actually use is a corruption. Or he can play around with the letters and the accents until he gets a word that he can explain. If all else fails, the etymologist can say that the word is of foreign origin. Our feeling that the providing of etymologies is a singularly unscientific activity is reinforced by comments at various points in the exchange, such as when Hermogenes says that Socrates' etymology for 'Hephaestus' sounds as though it is correct, "unless you happen to have another opinion on the matter. And you prob- ably do" (407c). And Socrates ascribes his prowess to the inspiration of Euthyphro, a man who, as is suggested by Plato's (presumably) earlier dialogue of the same name, is not the sort of person who would normally be regarded as a source of intellectual inspiration.'4 Further, the invocation

1' In the Euthyphro, the title-character claims that his special "knowledge of the divine" makes him "superior to the majority of men" (4e-5a), but he in fact comes across as petulant, shallow and flat-footed. Socrates, indeed, adopts rather a mocking

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of Euthyphro distances Socrates from the arguments that he gives in this section, and suggests that the sophists' intellectual reputation depends upon their mystique. The ability to produce etymologies at the drop of a hat is charismatic, but it is not scientific. And, as will be shown in the later discussion with Cratylus, even when etymologists get it right, their results are of limited importance.

My comments about the etymological section are in support of an inter- pretation that has been thoroughly and, to my mind, convincingly articu- lated by Baxter.'" The thought is that Plato wants to expose the weak- nesses of a way of doing philosophy that was popular during his lifetime. Baxter offers speculative but plausible opinions as to which of Plato's contemporaries used the etymological method, and which of them are the targets of which etymologies in the Cratylus.'6 If this way of reading the etymologies is correct (and it is, of course, what I am claiming to be the correct way of reading the entire dialogue), then we can begin to see why the etymological section is so long.'7

Part of Plato's purpose in the etymologies is to give an exhibition of the sort of discussion that might take place in the philosophical circles of Platonic Athens, and in particular in the expensive courses taught by the sophists. His ironic technique makes us believe that we are seeing a fairly accurate portrayal of such a discussion, and at the same time makes us aware of its absurdity. Producing his etymologies smoothly, spontaneously and, in many cases, correctly, Socrates plays the role of the brilliant ety- mologist, but he also, as we have seen, draws our attention to the arbi- trariness of his methods. Perhaps the etymological section is so long in order to give Socrates room to do both of these things. He can carry on the conversation as a sophist would, while dropping his self-deprecating comments just every now and then. If Plato had made all of the points that he wanted to make in a shorter discussion, then it might have looked more like a crude parody and we would have been less likely to believe that we were seeing the real thing. Well, that might not be true for read- ers of our time, who are not disposed to take etymological philosophy seriously, but it may well have been true for readers of Plato's time, who

tone in parts of the dialogue, announcing his humble desire to share in the wisdom of his interlocutor, a man who he has just shown to be quite silly (15d-e, for example).

'5 See Baxter's chs. 4 and 5. 16 Baxter, ch. 5. '7 See Baxter's comments on pp. 97-99.

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were.8 As it stands, the etymological section is a convincing satire, even though it does not make for gripping reading.

The approach to the etymologies that I have endorsed in this section has been forcefully questioned in a recent article by David Sedley.'9 On Sedley's view, Plato is not being ironic in the etymological section; Plato offers the etymologies seriously, taking most all of them to be etymolog- ically, if not philosophically, correct.21' That is to say that even if Plato does not think that we should be doing philosophy by doing etymology, he does think that the providing of etymologies is a useful and respectable way of finding the hidden meanings of words. Sedley provides evidence in favor of his claim that Plato had a genuine interest in etymology, and points out that Plato's ancient interpreters, so far as we know, all took the etymologies seriously.2' Further, Sedley shows that the etymologies are deliberately organised, and that their structure can be seen to anticipate the later division of philosophy into physics, ethics and logic.22 The pur- pose of the etymologies, Sedley suggests, is to reveal the ancient philo- sophical views, some true and some mistaken, that are embedded in the language that Plato and his contemporaries have inherited.23

I won't try to refute Sedley's interpretation, but I think that there are two points worth making. First, it is very difficult (for me, anyway) to read the references to the sophists, the invocations of Euthyphro, and Hermogenes' comments at 407c as doing anything other than establishing an ironic distance between Plato and the etymologies. And Sedley does not give reasons why Socrates should be taken seriously in the part of the etymological section that seems most ridiculous - the part in which he speaks of how sounds can imitate the essences of things.24

Second, it may be that we can accept many of Sedley's insights with- out giving up the view that the etymologies have an ironic purpose. It would certainly be silly to cling dogmatically to the claim that the

18 I have not said anything in defense of the claim that etymology-as-philosophy was popular in ancient Athens - again I refer the reader to Baxter, chs. 4 and 5. See also David Sedley, 'The Etymologies in Plato's Cratylus', Journal of Hellenic Studies 118, 1998, p. 141.

19 Sedley, pp. 140-154. 20 Sedley, pp. 140-141. 21 Sedley, pp. 142-146. 22 Sedley, pp. 148-150. 23 Sedley, pp. 150-152. 24 But see Sedley, p. 148.

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etymological section is just a piece of satirical theatre. Perhaps the correct story is as follows. Plato believes that the Attic Greek language was con- structed so as to reflect certain ancient philosophical views, and he believes that it is possible (not to mention fun) to use etymologies to spec- ulate as to what these views may be. He has an interest in cataloguing the ancient views, and this is part of what he is up to in the etymologi- cal section. He also, however, thinks that etymology-as-philosophy is a misconceived and insufficiently rigourous activity, and he wants to show up the sophists for the charlatans that they are. Perhaps Plato thinks that etymology has its place, but is concerned to see that it stays there.

4. Cratylus

Socrates tells Cratylus that if he has something better to say about the correctness of names, then "you may sign me up as a student in your course", suggesting that Cratylus may be one of the professional etymol- ogists whose pretensions are at issue (428b).25 Whatever the case, Cratylus is a naturalist about names, saying that he agrees with all the opinions and etymologies that Socrates has presented (428c). His naturalism goes so far as to include the belief that if a name is to be a name at all, then it must be a naturally correct name. He thinks that the name 'Hermogenes', for example, has not really been given to Hermogenes; "people take it to have been given to him, but it is really the name of someone else, namely, the very one who also has the nature" to which the name 'Hermogenes' refers (429c). Cratylus' view leads him to say that "one can neither speak nor say anything falsely", but for him this is not a relativist claim (429e). Those whose speech does not accord with the stringent rules of natural correctness are not really speaking, they are just making noise.

Against Cratylus' extreme claim, Socrates presents a pair of ingenious arguments (which I will only briefly describe). First, Socrates points out that we can know that a certain action is an attempt to name, even if the name ascribed is incorrect. When I step up to a man and say, 'This is your name', and then present the name 'woman', I am ascribing a false name (430e-431a). Second, if a correct name is one made up of letters which imitate the essence of the thing named, then it is possible to have a name that includes a little too much or leaves a little something out.

" On Cratylus' biography and philosophical views, see Baxter, pp. 25-30.

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Such a name will be imitation of the thing, and hence a name, but it will be an inferior imitation, and hence a false name (43lb-433b). Even if we accept that there is a naturally correct name for each thing, we should admit that there are some words which are not naturally correct names, but are names nonetheless.

Cratylus can think of no way around these considerations, but is still "not satisfied that something is a name if it isn't well given" (433c). So Socrates introduces a crucial argument. The Attic word for 'hardness' is 'sklerotes', and the Eretrian word is 'skleroter'. Both names seem to have some natural correctness, because they both end with letters, 's' and 'r', that are thought to signify hardness. '1', on the other hand, appears in each of the words, but it is thought to signify softness. But perhaps the 'P' has been incorrectly inserted into the words; despite the interloping letter, Cratylus suggests, the words are close enough to correct for us to know what they mean. But then, Socrates replies, what are we to say about 'skleron', the word for 'hard'? While 'skleron' contains the letters 's' and 'r', it is apparently not pronounced in a way that allows these letters to signify 'hardness', and there is no 's' or 'r' at the end of the word to make it an imitation of what it names. Yet, Socrates points out, we under- stand what people are saying when they use the word. That is true, says Cratylus, but only because of usage (434b-e).

Grasping onto this comment, Socrates forces Cratylus to agree that his 'usage' is nothing more than convention. If you know that you mean 'hard' when you say 'skleron', then "you have entered into a convention with yourself, and the correctness of names is a matter of convention for you, for isn't it the chance of usage and convention that makes both like and unlike letters express things?" (435a). The point is that even names which are not naturally correct can be made meaningful by convention. Socrates has proven that there exist names which are meaningful and correct, even if they are not naturally correct in the sense required by Cratylus.

Taken alone, Socrates' argument does not destroy the core naturalistic thesis. A naturalist could agree that there are names in use which are incorrect according to nature, and agree that these names have a conven- tional correctness, while still insisting that there is a single naturally cor- rect name for each thing. It might be possible, the naturalist can say, to weed out the names whose correctness is sustained only by convention and to replace them with naturally correct terms. So, we might think, there is life left in naturalism.

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In the speech in which he makes his point, however, Socrates delivers, as if in passing, a devastating argument against the naturalistic theory of language.

Consider numbers, Cratylus, since you want to have recourse to them. Where do you think you'll get names that are like each of the numbers, if you don't allow this agreement and convention of yours to have some control over the correct- ness of names? (435b)

Numbers are things whose essences cannot be imitated by the mouth or the tongue. The tongue can glide or click as much as it likes, the mouth can contort itself into all sorts of shapes, but they will never successfully imitate 'two' or 'thirty-seven'; no name could ever be the naturally cor- rect name of a number.26 And this is probably the thin end of the wedge. The powerful argument against naturalism is that there is no particular reason to believe that the essence of a given thing will be susceptible to vocal imitation. Many entities will not have natural names, and we will need a convention if we are to name such things.

Is Plato committing himself to conventionalism? Socrates continues:

I myself prefer the view that names should be as much like things as possible, but I fear that defending this view is like hauling a ship up a sticky ramp, as Hermogenes suggested, and that we have to make use of this worthless thing, convention, in the correctness of names. For probably the best possible way to speak consists in using names all (or most) of which are like the things they name (that is, are appropriate to them), while the worst is to use the opposite kind of names. (435c)

At first glance, Socrates' position is clear enough. He has shown that the names of many things - the numbers, for example - must be determined by convention, but he thinks that we should give naturally appropriate names whenever we can. It would be nice to say that all our names could be correct, but to defend such a view would be as difficult as hauling a ship up a sticky ramp. Convention is sometimes required, but we should use natural names where possible.

Others have seen this passage as endorsing a thoroughgoing conven- tionalism. Malcolm Schofield, for example, tells us that Socrates' natu-

"I Well, we could perhaps imitate the essence of numbers by using one click of the tongue to name the number one, two clicks to name the number two, and so on. But this gives rise to another problem: for large numbers, we would have to count the clicks to work out which number is being named, and what could we use to do the counting? (Thanks to Sarah Broadie for pointing this out.)

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ralistic sentiment is "nothing more than an expression of vain regret"."7 But I can see no reason to suppose that Socrates' words are not to be taken at face value. There is certainly no inconsistency between his posi- tion here and what is said in the rest of the dialogue. I agree, however, that Socrates could dispose of naturalism if he chose to do so; the class of things whose essence can be imitated in words seems very small, and the descriptions of how these essences are imitated are not very convinc- ing. But Socrates does not launch an outright attack upon naturalism, and this passage is not (as Schofield seems to suggest)21 the grand conclusion to the dialogue. Socrates moves on to other matters.

Socrates asks, "What power do names have for us? What's the good of them?", and Cratylus replies, "To give instruction, Socrates. After all, the simple truth is that anyone who knows a thing's name also knows the thing" (435d). Teaching the meaning of names, Cratylus says, is "the best and only way" to give instruction about the things that are (435e). For the remainder of the dialogue, Socrates argues against this claim.

The first problem with the idea is epistemic. Anyone who "investigates things by taking names as his guide" is at the mercy of the presupposi- tions of those who first gave the names (436b). Attic Greek, Socrates says, does not yield a consistent picture of reality when examined under the nat- uralistic theory, but there are indications that the language was developed by people who believed the Heraclitean doctrine that everything is in flux. In any case, the methods used by etymologists are not sufficiently precise for us to reach a reliable conclusion as to the metaphysical theory embod- ied in our language. "If one took the trouble", says Socrates, "I think one could find many other names from which one could conclude that the name-giver intended to signify not that they were moving and being swept along, but the opposite, that they were at rest" (437c). And even if a con- sistent view were to emerge, it would only tell us what the original name- givers thought, and they might have been wrong.

Second, if the study of names is the only way to learn about reality, then we cannot explain how the name-givers came to have the opinions they had. They must have gathered their knowledge from somewhere, and it cannot have been through language (438b). Moreover, if we are going to be able to work out which names are well given and which are not, then "we'll have to look for something other than names, something that

27 Malcolm Schofield, 'The denouement of the Cratylus', in Malcolm Schofield and Martha Nussbaum (eds.), Language and Logos, Cambridge, 1982, p. 67.

2X Schofield, p. 81.

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will make plain to us without using names which of these two kinds of names are the true ones" (438d). There must be some way to examine things directly, rather than via their names, and this direct method of investigating reality will be in every way superior. Only by looking straight to the things themselves can we gain knowledge that is not susceptible to the biases of others.29

At the end of the dialogue, Socrates gives a brief explanation of why he rejects Heraclitus's theory, regardless of what any etymological inves- tigation might say (this explanation begins at 439c and ends at 440b). Socrates' argument, as Baxter notes, seems out of place and, on some interpretations, pretty bad.30 My own view is that it is not meant to be a knock-down argument against Heracliteanism. Socrates is just expressing his opposition to the Heraclitean doctrine that Cratylus favours, and in doing so providing us (and Cratylus) with an example of a deep philo- sophical disagreement - the sort of disagreement that etymological inves- tigations could never satisfactorily resolve. Socrates is not launching into a tangential discussion of metaphysics, but is continuing to express his broader point. In drawing the dialogue to a close, Socrates certainly sug- gests that the debate between himself and Heracliteanism remains unre- solved. He concludes:

So whether I'm right about these things or whether the truth lies with Heraclitus and many others isn't an easy matter to investigate. But surely no one with any understanding will commit himself or the cultivation of his soul to names, or trust them and their givers to the point of firmly stating that he knows something - condemning both himself and the things that are to be totally unsound like leaky sinks - or believe that things are exactly like people with runny noses, or that all things are afflicted with colds and drip over everything. It's certainly possi- ble that things are this way, Cratylus, but it's also possible that they are not. So you must investigate them courageously and thoroughly and not accept anything easily - you are still young and in your prime after all. (440c-d)

The discussion of Heracliteanism is but another stop on the way to the dialogue's main conclusion: we should not do philosophy through ety- mology.3' As is appropriate for a discussion of methodology, the dialogue

29 It is not entirely clear what it means to "look to the things themselves". A plau- sible and straight-forward interpretation of the phrase, I think, is that to look to a thing itself is think about or observe the thing, rather than thinking about or observing the name of the thing.

30 Baxter, pp. 176-183. 3" Plato's disapproval of the etymological approach to philosophical questions may

well be an instance of a more general view that there is no close link between lan-

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ends with the metaphysical dispute unresolved, and with Socrates and Cratylus encouraging each other to keep thinking about it (440d-e).

5. The Interpretation

With regard to the question of what makes a name correct, the Cratylus is ambivalent. Neither conventionalism nor naturalism emerges favourably. Hermogenes' conventionalism is reasonable, but poorly thought-out, and it is quickly discarded in the face of Socrates' cunning arguments. These arguments, however, are fallacious, and a more confident and thoughtful conventionalist would not have succumbed. While Socrates later espouses a partially conventionalist view, he does not reconsider his earlier argu- ments, and Hermogenes' theory, as far as the dialogue is concerned, remains dead. Naturalism, the dialogue demonstrates, can never provide an explanation of the correctness of all names, because there are at least some names whose correctness relies upon convention. But naturalism about language is never explicitly rejected; indeed, Socrates, in the end, has some sympathy for the theory.

It seems reasonable to think that if the Cratylus were primarily con- cerned with the debate between naturalism and conventionalism, then Plato would have spent considerably more time on the issue than he did. He would have subjected the arguments against conventionalism to a more careful analysis and he would have explored more thoroughly the impli- cations for naturalism of the arguments given in the last section of the dialogue. He would certainly have put more effort into an exposition, and perhaps a defence, of Socrates' hybrid view. As the dialogue stands, the question of conventionalism and naturalism does not receive a satisfying philosophical treatment.

In contrast, the Cratylus presents a vigorous and compelling case against the idea that we can learn about reality by learning about names. In the etymological section, we see that those who investigate the natural correctness of names are involved in an activity which is arbitrary, untrust- worthy, and governed by rules designed to make the etymologist's task as easy as possible. In the discussion with Cratylus, we learn that the

guage and reality, and, hence, that a concern with language can sometimes be an impediment to the philosopher's attempts to understand things as they really are. Some textual evidence for such a view may be found in Letter VII, at 342a-344c, for exam- ple (but note the disagreement over whether or not Plato wrote the Letters). Also, some such view seems to be about in the Laws - see, for example, Book XIII, 965a onwards.

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investigation of reality through names is based upon flawed suppositions. Even when names have been constructed so as to be naturally appropri- ate to the things named, they will be appropriate only in the eyes of those who subscribe to the metaphysical views of the name-givers, and these views might be wrong. If our aim is to acquire sturdy, reliable knowledge about the world, Plato concludes, then we should stop spending intellec- tual energy on the correctness of names, and should look to the things themselves.

If we accept that Plato's main purpose is to dispose of etymology as a way of investigating the things there are, then we can begin to see why the dialogue is structured as it is. The references to the sophists, the long etymological satire and the emphasis in the dialogue's conclusion are all important to the building of a case against etymology. And if we accept this interpretation, then we can see why Plato may not have felt the need to resolve the debate between conventionalism and naturalism. He has shown that naturalism must be limited in scope, and that we can only know whether a thing's name is naturally correct if we already know all about the thing. Whether conventionalism or a restricted version of natu- ralism is correct, we should proceed by looking to the things themselves and not to their names. It may be that some names are naturally correct, or it may be that names are correct only by convention. But as far as philosophical inquiry is concerned, it just doesn't matter.32

Dept. of Philosophy Princeton University

32 I owe a large debt to Sarah Broadie, whose comments have been incorporated at several points in the paper. Thanks also to the Phronesis editors for their helpful comments.