Saturday, March 5, 2011
Day 33: Cratylus 440c-e
By now, we all know not to expect too much from Socrates' interlocutors. So I'm not going to belabor the point. But if Cratylus does indeed accept a Heraclitean metaphysics, why does he think there are natural names for things? If things have no stable natures, shouldn't we either (1) have an equally fluxy language, or (2) determine names by convention, and focus on the usefulness of names rather than their adequacy at corresponding with nature?
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Way to find something interesting to post in the very limited reading!
ReplyDeleteAnd you have to be right... Heraclitean metaphysics and natural naming has to be a very poor match.