Taking the tool analogy seriously: Forms and naming in the cratylus

Smith, Imogen

Abstract

Copyright © The Author(s) 2014. Published by Cambridge University Press. It has been suggested that the so-called tool analogy passage of Plato's Cratylus presents us with a moderate linguistic naturalism that can stand or fall independently of the more unpalatable etymological and mimetic theories advanced later in the dialogue. This paper offers a reading of the tool analogy which argues that Socrates' employment of Forms (and in particular Species-Forms), together with a careful distinction between the types of knowledge associated with making and using tools, aims to establish a radical linguistic naturalism that constrains the intrinsic properties of names. This should be clear if we take Socrates' claim seriously that names are tools: tools in general can only function successfully if they exhibit the relevant structural, compositional and (to some extent) material properties. Since Socrates claims that names are a class of tools and not merely like tools in some respects, as many have supposed, then what holds for tools in general must also hold for names.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: Jan 1, 2014
• Deposit Date: Mar 23, 2015
• Publicly Available Date: Feb 10, 2016
• Journal: Cambridge Classical Journal
• Print ISSN: 1750-2705
• Electronic ISSN: 2047-993X
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press (CUP)
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 60
• Pages: 75-99
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1750270514000037
• Keywords: Plato's Cratylus, tool analogy, ancient semantics
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/807370
• Publisher URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1750270514000037
• Additional Information: Additional Information : This article was published in The Cambridge Classical Journal, Vol 60, December 2014 DOI:10.1017/S1750270514000037
• Contract Date: Feb 10, 2016