This volume is the product of the 2017 Symposium Platonicum Pragense and is published under the banner of ‘Brill's Plato Studies’. It is available as an e-book and as a hardback. The editor, Mikeš, has neatly compiled ten chapters alongside an appropriately compact preface and a helpful index locorum (with references to all ancient citations, including those of Plato). Mikeš makes no pretensions to a unified or comprehensive interpretation of the Cratylus, and, though the book's official description suggests a thematic focus on language and ontology, the chapters cover a broad scope, sometimes engaging long-standing debates and sometimes breaking ground in novel ways. This broad range is not a weakness, and it serves as an apt testament to the difficulty and wonderful productivity of the Cratylus.
In Chapter 1 S. Lund Jørgensen proposes that the Cratylus’ initial discussion conveys how to read the dialogue: as a conversation between Socratic philosophers. Specifically, Lund Jørgensen argues that Hermogenes ought to be considered a robustly Socratic figure who uses technical expressions, formulates claims precisely and understands philosophical distinctions and idiosyncrasies. Furthermore, Hermogenes employs these in a classically Socratic epagoge, has a Socratic openness to refutation and, in some cases, even engages in Socratic irony. While readers are bound to question the details (especially regarding irony), Lund Jørgensen's presentation is exceptionally clear and convincing, and it strongly supports the novel conclusion that Hermogenes is a sharp and experienced philosopher. One might ask why this is significant, as many simply assume the Cratylus to be ‘early’ or ‘Socratic’, and Xenophon counts Hermogenes among Socrates’ circle (Mem. 1.2.48). The second part of the chapter addresses this concern by offering what Lund Jørgensen admits is a rather hasty presentation of the philosophical pay-off (renewed interpretations of the ‘stable natures’ argument at 368d8–e9, the nomothetēs and the dialogue's commitment to naturalism).
In Chapter 2 F. Ademollo outlines a number of ways in which the Cratylus might connect with twentieth-century philosophy of language. Perhaps most valuable is the way in which he situates the Cratylus with respect to the modern sense/reference distinction. For instance, the naturalist position presented early in the dialogue holds that names refer to their objects, but they do so by way of their sense (or, in the Cratylus, the informational content drawn from their etymology). Yet, as Socrates points out later in the dialogue, the trouble with this is that sense is not reliable as a means for referencing (name-givers can be mistaken about sense, a name's sense is obscured through usage etc.). Hence, Ademollo presents Socrates’ conventionalist response to Cratylus’ naturalist position as analogous to S. Kripke's response to B. Russell's descriptivist theory of names from Naming and Necessity (1980): in both cases ‘etymological sense’ is shown to be unnecessary, and we are left with the rigid designation, or reference, of our names. Regardless of the success of this analogy, Ademollo provides a brilliant defence of the Cratylus as the earliest systematic treatment of this sense/reference distinction, and his argument is one that future interpretations will need to take into account.
In Chapter 3 F. Aronadio argues that the Cratylus distinguishes between two components of language: intentionality (the aboutness of language) and reference (what language picks out). According to Aronadio, the dialogue canvasses uses of language that are intentional but not referential, such as the etymologies and incorrect uses of names (e.g. ‘Hermogenes’ at 429e). Moreover, Aronadio argues that this solves the puzzle in the Sophist of our inability to say τὸ μηδαμῶς ὂν (237bf.): although there is nothing that τὸ μηδαμῶς ὂν refers to, the phrase is understood and, hence, intentional (and, hence, a legitimate use of language). Readers are bound to dispute this connection and the distinction giving rise to it – for example ‘Hermogenes’ does seem to refer (to Cratylus), and the whole point of the Eleatic τὸ μηδαμῶς ὂν seems to be that it fails to be intentional. However, Aronadio's argument is extraordinarily novel and bound to be provocative.
In Chapter 4 Mikeš argues that the Cratylus is unified by presenting a position he terms ‘conventionalist naturalism’. According to Mikeš, this resolves several longstanding debates in the Cratylus (the apparently displaced truth-passage in 385b2–385e3, the multiple confusions surrounding the tool analogies in 386f., and – most significantly – the vexed ‘forms of names’ references at 389af.). In particular, Mikeš argues that name-forms are neither classic Platonic forms nor phonetic entities. Instead, they are an ‘ontological third’ akin to Fregean sense. Tantalizingly, none of the resolutions to the debates is thoroughly elaborated (this would be impossible in a single chapter), and the chapter ends with too brief an analysis of their role in the remainder of the dialogue (especially in the arguments of Socrates’ ‘re-examination’). Nevertheless, Mikeš’s suggestions concerning how the ontology of name-forms relates to the semantics of the dialogue are intriguing, well worth reading and hopefully the seed of a productive line of discussion.
In Chapter 5 A. Pavani defends the position that a ‘natural name’ (389d4–5) is a sort of concept. She does this by paying careful attention to the ‘tool analogy’ context in which the phrase ‘natural name’ is introduced. There is much that is valuable in her analysis of the analogy, not the least of which is a table on page 98 graphically distinguishing the analogues. Pavani concludes that the analogy successfully points to what it is that correct names share. After surveying the options in the literature (and rejecting that a ‘natural name’ is a form, a linguistic type or a meaning), Pavani argues that it is ‘conceptual reference’. Readers are bound to question the difference between Pavani's use of ‘meaning’ and ‘concept’, but the chapter certainly provides a valuable new discussion of the terms used in the tool analogy and their ontological constituents.
In Chapter 6, written in German, J. Jinek addresses the names of the gods both in the dialectical passages at 391f. and in the subsequent etymologies. This chapter departs markedly from the more traditional methodologies employed in previous chapters by focusing on esoteric and comic (Jinek claims specifically Aristophanic, p. 109) elements. For instance, he interprets Socrates’ forgetfulness of names of gods higher than Zeus as both ridiculous (p. 118) and as an esoteric gesture (p. 119) – so as not to attempt rational discourse about something above reason's threshold. The philosophical thrust of Jinek's chapter is that the correctness of the gods’ names is a matter of metaphysics; for instance, Κρόνος is correct because it is grounded in the principles διάνοια and νοῦς. What this might amount to is not explained, and readers might wonder why the apparently serious treatments of this question in Proclus or the Derveni Papyrus (mentioned on p. 116 n. 30) is not discussed. Nevertheless, this chapter provides a number of insights for anyone working on the names of the gods in the Cratylus.
In Chapter 7 O. Pettersson focuses on the etymology of ‘Hermes’ (407e5–408b3) to shed light on Socrates’ discussion of ‘inquiry without names’ late in the dialogue. Clearly and convincingly, Pettersson traces the three different aspects of the etymology and connects them to other parts of the dialogue in order to conclude that Socrates indeed meant that we should investigate without names. First, Hermes is the god of commerce, and Socrates opposes the sophistic commercialism of names (as items that could be circulated apart from context). Second, Hermes is a thief, and Socrates warns against relying on language that borrows from others. And third, Hermes is deceptive, and Socrates presents the human portion of logos as inescapably permeated by deception. Pettersson recognises that each of the shortcomings of human language points to a divine alternative, but he ends with ambivalence: ‘This does not mean that all hope is lost, but it does mean that Socrates might be right. Reality is to be sought through reality and names through names’ (p. 142).
In Chapter 8 M. Bergomi argues that Plato uses Gorgias’ treatise On That Which is Not (Περὶ τοῦ μὴ ὄντος) as a source for conventionalist arguments in the Cratylus. Though Gorgias is nowhere quoted or seemingly alluded to in the Cratylus, Bergomi enumerates parallels between the two works to take what she admits is a first step in the direction of establishing Gorgias as a philosophically relevant influence on the Cratylus. Some readers might worry that, given the little we know about Gorgias’ treatise, such an endeavour is doomed to obscurum per obscurius. However, this ground-breaking chapter opens some extremely interesting questions about the relation between Gorgias’ treatise and the Cratylus, and it will doubtless serve as the basis for future discussions of the relation between these two important works.
In Chapter 9, written in French, F. Ildefonse proposes a reading of the Cratylus that makes sense of some ideas developed by the Sophist and by Stoicism, respectively. In particular, she discusses how each work differs in its treatment of the parts of language – the Cratylus’ position on natural names, the Sophist on logos and the Stoics on lekta. This chapter is rather impressionistic, though it contains a number of insights, particularly with respect to the translation of the terms involved.
In Chapter 10 F. Karfík tracks the transitions from a focus on names and flux in the Cratylus to a focus on logos and a more relational ontology in the Theaetetus and Sophist. He does this to show that the concern of the Cratylus is not primarily the adjudication of naturalist and conventionalist theories of language, but rather the question of whether or not we need language to acquire knowledge – whether or not mimetic language is sufficient for knowledge and truth. This essay is valuable as descriptive of these long-standing issues, but regrettably does not engage specifically with the secondary literature on them.
As noted, the quality of contributions is somewhat uneven. However, this volume contains a great deal of excellent work on Plato's Cratylus and constitutes an important contribution to the scholarship on that dialogue, one that scholars of the dialogue will need to become familiar with.
