The Project Gutenberg EBook of Cratylus, by Plato

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Title: Cratylus

Author: Plato

Translator: B. Jowett

Posting Date: September 26, 2008 [EBook #1616]
Release Date: January, 1999

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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Produced by Sue Asscher

CRATYLUS

By Plato

Translated by Benjamin Jowett

INTRODUCTION.

The Cratylus has always been a source of perplexity to the student
of Plato. While in fancy and humour, and perfection of style and
metaphysical originality, this dialogue may be ranked with the best of
the Platonic writings, there has been an uncertainty about the motive of
the piece, which interpreters have hitherto not succeeded in dispelling.
We need not suppose that Plato used words in order to conceal his
thoughts, or that he would have been unintelligible to an educated
contemporary. In the Phaedrus and Euthydemus we also find a difficulty
in determining the precise aim of the author. Plato wrote satires in
the form of dialogues, and his meaning, like that of other satirical
writers, has often slept in the ear of posterity. Two causes may be
assigned for this obscurity: 1st, the subtlety and allusiveness of this
species of composition; 2nd, the difficulty of reproducing a state of
life and literature which has passed away. A satire is unmeaning unless
we can place ourselves back among the persons and thoughts of the age in
which it was written. Had the treatise of Antisthenes upon words, or
the speculations of Cratylus, or some other Heracleitean of the fourth
century B.C., on the nature of language been preserved to us; or if we
had lived at the time, and been 'rich enough to attend the fifty-drachma
course of Prodicus,' we should have understood Plato better, and many
points which are now attributed to the extravagance of Socrates' humour
would have been found, like the allusions of Aristophanes in the Clouds,
to have gone home to the sophists and grammarians of the day.

For the age was very busy with philological speculation; and many
questions were beginning to be asked about language which were
parallel to other questions about justice, virtue, k