Cratylus
Translated by Benjamin Jowett
4h 24m
52,634 words
en
Hermogenes thinks names are pure convention. Cratylus thinks every word names its object by nature. Socrates plays each off the other through a dizzying barrage of etymologies — some serious, many parodic — before settling on an answer that satisfies neither: language is a tool, neither the bedrock of truth nor a meaningless overlay. A strange, brilliant dialogue that anticipates twentieth-century philosophy of language.
