Cratylus and the Origin of Language

A critical essay by

Paola Rodríguez Sagastuy

© 2010 by Paola Rodríguez Sagastuy

Cratylus and the Origin of Language

Plato, and through him Socrates, were the first great philosophers of the western world.

Since no writings of Socrates reach us, we must rely on Plato to do any sort of study of

their philosophies. Plato delved deep into many disciplines and asked many questions,

most of which are still being discussed by philosophers today. One of these questions is

whether or not the reality that we perceive through our senses is “real”, a distortion of

the real thing, or a figment of our imaginations. He questioned our own ability to reach

“true” knowledge: The Truth.

In the Cratylus, Plato questions the reliability of language to be a means by which

knowledge of reality can be achieved. As is customary in platonic dialogues, he begins

by expressing extreme opposite views on the matter, in the voice of different characters:

Cratylus stands by the position that each thing has a name that is natural and true, and

Hermogenes represents the position of sophists like Protagoras, who had been looking

into the etymologies of language and proposed that words were arbitrary and a mere

convention amongst human beings to denote the things that belonged to their world.

Plato proceeds to explore each position, proving how inconceivable it is to believe one

or the other in isolation. First he attempts to disprove the true and unequivocal nature

of words. Etymologically, he analyzes words to see if they carry their own meaning in

and of themselves. The initial problem he must face is the existence of different human

languages. He overcomes this problem by assuming that, in the same way that our

perception of reality is imperfect, the words we use are variations or deviations from the

original names given to things by the “name-giver”, and that the closest we can get to

these names is through the names of gods and heroes. So he goes into analyzing these

names and trying to find the characteristics these gods and heroes indeed possessed as

well as whether or not they are included in their given names. He finds this method

faulty, since it does not always work, and it hardly reaches very far. Then he takes the

phonetic approach, looking at the sounds of words, and trying to match the nature of the

sound with some intrinsic meaning. Again, while he does find certain coincidental

recurrences of some sounds, he also finds not a few contradictions.

He is then forced to conclude that while there are some aspects of words that seem

intrinsically related to their meaning, it is also through convention that we are able to

use words to communicate amongst ourselves.

In her History of Linguistics in Europe from Plato to 1600, Vivien Law addresses this

discussion in her chapter about Greek philosophy. She presents both ends of the

argument and their implications. If, as Cratylus defends, language is an exact

representation of reality and the names of things are unchangeable and unavoidable,

then human beings have no freedom in its usage, either in style or in the possibility of

lying. If, on the other hand, language is arbitrary, a convention, then we are free to do

what we will with it, but it does not serve as a means to arrive at true knowledge.

She sees Plato’s position of finding a golden medium between both arguments not as a

copout, as has been viewed by some authors, but rather as Plato’s way of getting to the

truth.

But this has implications of its own. If we cannot make an argument for the “rightness of

names” and we are forced to accept a certain degree of conventionality and arbitrariness

in the words that we use to name things, then we must leave language and words behind

in our search for the Forms, for the world of ideas and of reality that Plato so zestfully

seeks. Vivien Law does not see the Cratylus as a treatise on linguistics; instead she views

it as an epistemological work that approaches the matter of finding true knowledge

through language and is disappointed. From here on in, language will no longer be of

interest to Plato.

Personally I think that the fact that back in the 5th and 4th centuries b. C. —2500 years

ago—people were spending time on thinking about language, about truth and our ability

or disability to reach it, speaks about the very nature of human beings. We are still

asking ourselves the same questions today, and all we have are new answers, but not

one definitive true answer. I wonder what Plato would say about that. I imagine he

would be either utterly disappointed or, more likely, completely fascinated.