This study offers a ckomprehensive new interpretation of one of Plato's dialogues, the Cratylus. Throughout, the book combines analysis of Plato's arguments with attentiveness to his philosophical method.
Rachel Barney is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Chicago.
Preface; Introduction: The Argument of the Cratylus; I. From Convention to Nature; I.1 Conventionalism; I.2 Subjectivism and Private Naming; I.3 The Significance of Conventionalism; I.4 Against Conventionalism; I.5 The First Stage of Naturalism: Names as Tools; II. The Second Stage of Naturalism: Function and Genre in the Etymologies; II.1 Rational Reconstruction; II.2 The Inspiration Episode; II.3 The Agonistic Display; II.4 The Etymologies as Agon; II.5 Plato and Parmenides on the Deceptiveness of Language ; III. The Third Stage of Naturalism: Mimetic Correctness; III.1 Beyond Etymology; III.2 Mimesis and the Elements of Language; III.3 Craft and the Foundations of Correctness; IV. Natural Correctness Re-examined; IV.1 The Dianome Argument; IV.2 On the Correctness of Images; IV.3 The Two Cratyluses; IV.4 The Sklerotes Argument ; IV.5 The Names of the Numbers; IV.6 Conclusions About Correctness; V. From Names to Things; V.1 Against the Study of Names ; V.2 Language, Knowledge and Flux; VI. The Cratylus and After: Names and Logoi; VI.1 The Seventh Letter and the Weakness of Language; VI.2 Logos and Knowledge; Chapter VII: The Cratylus and After: False Statement; VII.1 False Statement in the Cratylus; VII.2 The Sophist on Syntax; VII.3 The Sophist on False Statement; Bibliography; Index