Reading Questions for Plato's "Cratylus"

1. At the very beginning of the excerpt from Plato's dialogue, Hermogenes asks Socrates about the relationship between the words for "being" and "name" (38). What are those words? How are they related to one another? What does their relationship suggest about the connection between language and the real?

2. Explain what sort of "search" is implied by the word for "name"? What does Socrates mean by a "primary element" (39)?

3. How are "secondary" names related to "primary" ones (39)? What comes before primary names?

4. What does Socrates say about imitation? How is naming a kind of imitation? What does naming seek to imitate?

5. Explain Socrates's analogy between his inquiry into primary names and the human attempt to understand the Gods: "as I said before of the Gods, that of the truth about them we know nothing, and do but entertain human notions of them . . ." (40).

6. Summarize Socrates's thesis about the derivation of words (40-41) from the nature of their parts.

7. What is the source of the disagreement between Socrates and Cratylus (42) on the issue of the truth and falsity of names? What is Cratylus's position? Think about the Platonic allegory of the cave. Where does Cratylus see himself in that binary structure? Why do you think so?

8. Why does Socrates compare names to portraiture? How are they alike? How does Cratylus distinguish between them (43)?

9. How does Socrates demonstrate that names must differ from the things they name (43-44)?

10. What does Socrates mean by the preservation of "general character" (44)? Can you paraphrase the Socratic remarks using the notion of "metonymy"?

11. Where does familiarity or convention fit in to the dialogue? What does Hermogenes believe about the use of names (44)? How does convention differ from what Socrates calls "the most perfect state of language" (45)? Why does Socrates reconcile himself to convention?

12. What is dangerous about relying on names to know "the things what are expressed by them" (45)? What sort of cautionary tale does Socrates relate (46)? For what kind of vigilance does it call? How does Cratylus respond (46)? Why is it "certainly not" reasonable (46)?

13. Is there a way to know things without using names according to Plato (47)?

14. Does the dialogue finally favour the truth of the absolute or of flux (47-8)?

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