Cratyle

Cratyle , in Greek old Κρατύλος Kratylos (fifth century BC) Greek philosopher , disciple of Héraclite d' Éphèse.

Biography

We do not know the birth dates and of died of Cratyle; Plato, in the Cratyle (440 d), presents it as being younger than Socrate. According to Aristote ( Metaphysical , I, 6), Plato was his pupil before becoming that of Socrate, or perhaps after, according to Diogène Laërce (III, 6). Plato devoted one of his dialogs to him.

Doctrines

According to Plato ( Cratyle , 440 d), Cratyle supported, like Protagoras, that it is impossible to hold a false speech, because to hold such a speech is to say what is not. The speech thus expresses according to him always the to be.

He however thought, always according to Plato, that there exists a straightness of natural denomination of the beings, and that the name is not a conventionally allotted sound.

Like Héraclite d' Éphèse, he thought that all the sensitive ones run out unceasingly, and that one cannot make the Science of it (Aristote, Métaphysique , has, VI, 987 has 29). One can thus according to him nothing say of truth on what changes. This theory is described as radical by Aristote, which indicates that Cratyle reproached Héraclite for having said that one cannot enter the same river twice, whereas it estimated that one cannot even enter there only once. This theory would have led Cratyle has to think that one should not anything any more say, and Aristote reports that it was satisfied to stir up the finger ( ibid , delivers gamma, V, 1010 has 7).

The dialog of Plato

Socrat fights there two theses opposed on the truth of the language, that of Hermogène, who supports who them names is right according to a convention and that of Cratyle, which support which the names are right by nature. Behind these two theses two hide searches of the direction. There is in filigrame thought of Hermogène the thesis protagoréenne of " the man measures of all chose". Applied to the language, this thesis affirms that it is the man who gives a direction to any thing. The truth of the world belongs consequently to human social world. Contrary, Cratyle, by affirming the natural accuracy of the names, propose a nature which has a direction, but which escapes the men: all is in a flow perpetual, a heracliteism pushed with the absurdity. To challenge these two visions of the world, Socrat will explode the adequacy up to that point idyllic between word and name.

Against Hermogène, Socrate establishes that the words are instruments which are used for to name reality. They thus have a bond with it: the things have an existence which does not depend on us and thus that the acts which are reported to it do not depend us more us (386e). However, speech is an act and to name part of this act is referred with the things. To name thus corresponds to the property of the things to be able to name or to be named (387d). The name is this instrument which makes it possible to name (388 B, c). It is the legislator who establishes the names and composes, starting from syllables, the name which corresponds to a thing. The dialectician, who makes use of names to question and to answer will be able to judge work (390d). This accuracy of the name is found thanks to the etymology (393c and according to), which finds in the names the logos. For example, barbarians admiring them stars of the sky always running (thein) called the gods theos. Words in words, the etymologician goes back to the " names primitifs" (421). These names, by the letters and the syllables, imitate the nature of an object to name it (423e). For example, the R which suggest the expression of the movement, C that of softness.

Cratyle approves the remarks of Socrate, but refuses to consider that names can be badly established: so names are not badly established, they are not any more but glares of voice (430a). Socrat corrects his paradigm then. The words are more than instruments who are used to name reality: they are as images which return to reality (430a). From where possible errors of attribution. Indeed, an image never imitates perfectly a thing (if not it is not any more one image, but a copy, which becomes independent of sound original). In the same way for the names, if the name of Cratyle imitated perfectly Cratyle, there would be no more one but two Cratyle. Like an icon, the name must preserve its statute of image: it thus has imperfections necessary not to redouble things of another reality made of words (myth of both Cratyle). The name should not be exactly the thing, but simply indicate the characteristics of a thing. (433c).

In front of Cratyle, which pains to admit it, Socrate shows in the names the share of convention that it a: the use sometimes replaces the resemblance there to indicate one thing. Whereas the R expresses hardness and C softness, the Athenians say sklerotes and people of Erétrie skleroter to say hardness (431c - 435c).

How consequently to know the things starting from the names as Cratyle claims it? Did the first which established the names have an idea right of the things? But how expli- quer that the names suggest with equivocity sometimes the rest sometimes the movement (by example âpis T mh? How could it know the things, whereas their name did not exist not yet if it is their name which made known them? (435d - 439b)? Cratyle answers in calling upon the gods like base of the names. Socrat refuses that and asks to go with the things directly, without the names to know them. (438e): the names do not have nor one natural direction nor a conventional direction and yet, they is crossed by a requirement of direction. It is thus not on the word, but on the direction which research must carry. One passes thus of Cratyle in Théétète.

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