Correctness of Names (Orthotēs Onomatōn)

The question the Cratylus is built around: what makes this the right name for that? Plato stages two answers — Hermogenes' conventionalism (a name is correct by agreement) and Cratylus' naturalism (each name names by nature) — and through Socrates develops a third picture: names are tools for "dividing being," made by an expert "rule-setter" who looks to "the form of the name," and judged by the dialectician who uses them. The dialogue's deepest lesson is critical: even granting that names encode the name-givers' beliefs, those beliefs may be wrong, so knowledge cannot be gotten through names but only by reaching "the things themselves."

Key Points

  • The two positions: Hermogenes — "any name you give a thing is its correct name" (384d); Cratylus — "a natural correctness of names, the same for everyone" (383a–b).
  • Names as tools (organon): a name is "a tool for giving instruction, that is to say, for dividing being" (388b–c) — not an arbitrary tag.
  • The rule-setter (nomothetēs): names are made by "the kind of craftsman most rarely found among human beings" (389a), who "embod[ies] in sounds and syllables the name naturally suited to each thing" by looking to "the form of the name" — so different languages can be correct "as long as they give it the same form."
  • The non-duplication principle: an image must not duplicate its original — a perfect copy of Cratylus would be "two Cratyluses," not Cratylus and an image (432c). Correctness is therefore not exact resemblance, and convention must contribute after all ("we have to make use of this worthless thing, convention," 435c).
  • The critical close: the giver of the first names had no names to learn from, so he knew the things directly; therefore "it must be possible to learn about the things… independently of names" (438e), and "far better to investigate them through themselves" (439b).

What the Concept Does

  • Subordinates language to dialectic and to the things: the user (dialectician) judges the name-maker's product, and knowledge is finally of things, not names — language is a tool, not the medium of truth.
  • Diagnoses language as a historical deposit: etymology reveals only "what those who first introduced our words thought" — beliefs that "time has had a share" in covering over (414c) and that may be a "civil war among names" (438d). Names sediment, and the sediment can mislead.

What It Rejects

  • Pure naturalism (likeness alone) — defeated by the non-duplication principle and the sklēron counterexample.
  • Pure conventionalism (any tag will do) — defeated by the argument that naming is an action with a natural way of being performed.
  • Etymology-as-route-to-truth — the prestigious contemporary "science" Socrates practices brilliantly only to declare it unable to reach the things (the insider's critique).

Stakes

The Cratylus is the wiki's ancient anchor for the philosophy of language, and it sharpens a crucial distinction the corpus needs: conventionalism is not arbitrariness. Hermogenes is a nomenclaturist — names as agreed labels for pre-given things — not a proto-Saussurean. Saussurean arbitrariness is diacritical (a sign's value comes from its differences within the system); the Cratylus's two options are both pre-diacritical, lacking the relational conception entirely. So the Cratylus is not "Saussure avant la lettre" — recognizing this blocks a tempting false friend and clarifies what is genuinely new in the structural-diacritical conception of the sign (and in MP's reception of it). A second seam: the nomos/nomothetēs pun — the conventionalist's own word (nomos = convention) roots the figure who institutes natural correctness — is an ancient cousin of the wiki's institution/sedimentation structure (a "natural" rightness that must be laid down and then sediments over time).

Connections

  • contrasts with the Saussurean arbitrariness of the sign — conventionalism (labels for pre-given things) ≠ diacritical arbitrariness (value from systemic differences); both Cratylus positions are pre-diacritical. (See ferdinand-de-saussure; the diacritical conception of the sign is discussed via indirect-language.)
  • has cross-tradition cousin indirect-language — the non-duplication principle (a coinciding image ceases to be an image) is a structural cousin of MP's thesis that exhaustive/frontal expression would cease to express (different grounds: ontological gap vs diacritical signification).
  • contrasts with innere-sprachform — the etymological-revelatory thesis (a language encodes a worldview) anticipates Humboldt's inner form, but adds a critical limit: the encoded worldview may be false.
  • requires theory-of-forms — "the form of the name" (389a) grounds natural correctness; "the beautiful itself" (439c) grounds knowledge against flux.
  • develops mimesis — a primary name as "a vocal imitation" of a thing's being/essence (423b–424b), sharply distinguished from crude onomatopoeia.

Open Questions

  • Is "the form of the name" a Form in the full sense, or a looser use of eidos? The dialogue's pervasive irony makes the answer turn on the serious-vs-parodic status of the etymological middle.
  • How seriously should the sōma/sēma aside ("the body is the tomb/sign of the soul," 400c) be taken as a sign-theory locus, given its Orphic framing?

Sources

  • plato-cratylus — the naturalism/conventionalism debate; the organon/nomothetēs theory (388a–390d); the non-duplication principle (431e–433a); the critical close (436b–440e).