Thesis and Antithesis: Notes on Plato’s Cratylus
With respects to the status of languages, more particularly their components: names and verbs. Whether they are arbitrary, or follow some kind of natural similarity according to the essences of things. Under this similarity thesis we could either keep names as mere representations or as a genuine expression of the object’s essence. The latter would elevate language to such a high status that the mere mention of a natural object’s name would be intimately linked with it’s essence. The procession would pressupose something noetic, as the capacity of the human mind to translate form directly into material substrata such as sound; verily, it would pressupose something about matter and its relation to reality and the very natures of things. There would be a kind of interpenetration of material and immaterial, matter and form. It would be as if, by calling an object by its proper name you would be almost manifesting it and calling it into yourself and others. Part of its sonorous dimension, part of its simbolic dimension, and into your soul, it’s very form bears itself out to you.
With the former however, even though the representations are not conventional and arbitrary, just as to make a painting, one needs to make it not arbitrarily but under proper order (proportion, light and shadow, gesture, color theory etc.), so the name would absolutely not be conventional and arbitrary despite being done in many different ways, as, e.g. the realist style, the classical style or the impressionist style. This one only goes as far as delimiting the range of its affirmations to the extent of there being common principles behind the ordination of names as opposed to affirming the existence of these universal structures in them, both material and immaterial, the one in the thing’s essence and in the soul, the other, material, such as particular types of matter being associated with determined essences, or at least potential parts of them, as is carbon to the potential part of essences: animal.
Now as to the antithesis, wherein the name of the thing would be completely conventional, one could point out that Socrates tried to find a common underlying theme(s) that was to serve as the basis behind the nature of interrelated things, like wisdom and good and knowledge, having to do with freedom, unimpeded motion, or the freeing up of. Conversely, ‘bad’ would be a schackling of this motion. But in the end he failed as he found that the same words actually signified the opposite under different interpretations. Finally convinced by the problem of identity under absolute motion when investigating through means other than the signification of names. All of which could corroborate to the proposition that the diversity of languages is a wheight of evidence in favor of the conventionality of names.
Despite all of this, the Cratylus leaves us in a plausible synthesis of convention and naturality. On the one hand, by decomposing names into their elements, the letters, and showing how each of these may be associated with different qualities, like ‘r’ with speed and movement, or ‘l’ with slickness or smoothness and how a word which has employed these elements correctly such that it expresses in greater likeness what it was intended to mean is most proper. On the other, showing that according to this criterion some names are inappropriately named, adding that aspect of convention through usage; usage of both like and unlike names. Also to be noted is that under this framework names are representations of things; considering this, Socrates make an important distinction, that is: the representations of things with a non sensorial nature is different from the representations of things with a sensorial nature. The one implies a sort of necessity, in that they must either be some number(for example)–despite the modifications intruduced–or not be anything at all. The other, must, like the painting not contain all the details it represents. So naming things would be equivalent to representing things with a sensorial nature because it has a material support (sound) and thus sensorial. But does this mean then that representations of immaterial things contain all the details they represent? Inasmuch as the representations of numbers do not take on a material form, but remain in the mind, yes. That’s what it seems to be implying. Further one might aduce a connection with the ‘eidos’. As to this, it is not certain.
Lastly, one more argument could be made in aristotelean(ironically) terms, for this synthesis and against the absolute conventionality of names. Based on the fixed essences of things, actions that are performed in relation to those things, must be in accordance with the principles of their essences as the accidents and properties follow from the essence, thus the range of actions one can perform on an object is delimited by its material structure and circle of latency/possibilities (which flows from the object’s essence or identity), e.g. a dog cannot fly. Following this line of reasoning an action’s performance accords the action’s own nature. An object that, in its nature, would have cutting within its range of actionable accidents (from the category action), and another which would have it’s reciprocal, to be cut, in it’s passionable accidents (from the category passion). Thus, to cut, you must inform matter, bring it into formation in the likeness of that which cuts; likewise, one must name (an act), in the likeness of that which is named . If we were to maintain this analogy in rigid form, “be like that which names”, the corolaries would be different, as names would be in the likeness of the human mind. But we could object that this likeness would be to the human mind only insofar as it reflects or bridges the path to the essences of things.
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