Plato's Cratylus

S. Montgomery Ewegen

Description

Plato as humorist

Plato's dialogue Cratylus focuses on being and human dependence on words, or the essential truths about the human condition. Arguing that comedy is an essential part of Plato's concept of language, S. Montgomery Ewegen asserts that understanding the comedic is key to an understanding of Plato's deeper philosophical intentions. Ewegen shows how Plato's view of language is bound to comedy through words and how, for Plato, philosophy has much in common with playfulness and the ridiculous. By tying words, language, and our often uneasy relationship with them to comedy, Ewegen frames a new reading of this notable Platonic dialogue.

Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. First Words
2. Marking the Limits
3. A Question of Inheritance
4. The Nature of Nature
5. Technological Language
6. A Homeric Inheritance
7. What Words Will
8. The Tragedy of Cratylus
Conclusion: The Comedy of the Cratylus
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Épistémologie
• Philosophie de l'esprit
• Éthique et morale
• Movements
• Moral Philosophy
• PHILOSOPHY
• Philosophie et théologie
• Phenomenology
• Ethics

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 14 novembre 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253010513
• Langue: English

Extrait

PLATO S CRATYLUS
Studies in Continental Thought
EDITOR
JOHN SALLIS
CONSULTING EDITORS Robert Bernasconi J. N. Mohanty Rudolf Bernet Mary Rawlinson John D. Caputo Tom Rockmore David Carr Calvin O. Schrag Edward S. Casey Reiner Sch rmann Hubert L. Dreyfus Charles E. Scott Don Ihde Thomas Sheehan David Farrell Krell Robert Sokolowski Lenore Langsdorf Bruce W. Wilshire Alphonso Lingis David Wood William L. McBride
PLATO S CRATYLUS
The Comedy of Language
S. Montgomery Ewegen
Indiana University Press
Bloomington and Indianapolis
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press Office of Scholarly Publishing Herman B Wells Library 350 1320 East 10th Street Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
Telephone orders 800-842-6796 Fax orders 812-855-7931
2014 by Shane Montgomery Ewegen
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ewegen, S. Montgomery.
Plato s Cratylus : the comedy of language / S. Montgomery Ewegen.
pages cm. - (Studies in Continental thought)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-253-01044-5 (alk. paper) - ISBN 978-0-253-01051-3 (eb)
1. Plato. Cratylus. 2. Language and languages-Philosophy. I. Title.
B367.E94 2013
184-dc23
2013010885
1 2 3 4 5 18 17 16 15 14
For the Bear, the Platypus, the Cat, and the Magpie and in memory of Waldo and S ren
A , Eternity is a child playing, moving pieces in a game. Kingship to the child.

-Heraclitus, Fr. 52; trans. Kahn, slightly modified
Big things, child of Hipponicus, you ask. But there is a serious way of talking about the names of these gods and a playful way. So ask some others for the serious way; but there is nothing to prevent us from passing through the playful way. For even the gods are lovers of play.

-Cratylus, 406b-c (my translation)
CONTENTS
Preface
Acknowledgments
Note on Translation
List of Textual Abbreviations
Introduction
1 First Words
2 Marking the Limits
3 A Question of Inheritance
4 The Nature of Nature
5 Technological Language
6 A Homeric Inheritance
7 What Words Will
8 The Tragedy of Cratylus
Conclusion: The Comedy of the Cratylus
Notes
Bibliography
Index
PREFACE
A book such as this does not require an extensive and ponderous preface: rather, a short and ponderous preface will suffice. Far from being an exhaustive treatment of Plato s Cratylus, this book hopes to show the impossibility of exhausting the Platonic dialogue. Even after this work there is much that remains concealed in Plato s Cratylus, and shall perhaps forever remain concealed. My hope is that this present work will inspire new and creative research into this exquisite and tremendously complex dialogue. To all those future interpreters of Plato s challenging work, I offer you the same self-serving words that Socrates offers Cratylus at the end of the dialogue that bears his name: You must continue to consider [these matters] courageously and thoroughly and not accept anything carelessly-for you are still young and in your prime; then, if after investigating, you find the truth, please share it with me (44od).
A cold day in Boston-January, 2013
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Too many to count have brought the fire to me, always selflessly, never tiring, superabundant. The inadequacy of offering mere words in gratitude for such overflowing warmth is a burden that those who have benefited from others must bear. But gratitude is neither a currency nor a form of compensation: rather, it is an acknowledgment of the impossibility of paying back the gifts that one has received. I offer my limitless, yet forever insufficient, gratitude to John Sallis, Jerry Sallis, Robert Metcalf, Marina McCoy, Drew Hyland, Mary Troxell, and Yvonne and Robert Ewegen. I thank also Dee Mortensen and Indiana University Press for their help and support, and Emma Young for her invaluable assistance. I am grateful, too, to Joe Sachs for his excellent and timely translation of the Cratylus . I offer endless gratitude to Maggie, who has had to live with me during the creation of this book and will, hopefully, be living with me for the creation of many more. Finally, I offer this book to S ren, the greatest cat in the universe, who sat on it at every stage of its creation. May the finished product be as comfortable to you as were the many drafts leading up to it-and may there be hardbound books, potent catnip, and buttery croissants in kitty heaven.
NOTE ON TRANSLATIONS
No translation of the Cratylus is perfect-a hermeneutical fact owed not to the failures of any particular translator, but to the richness and essential ambiguities of the Cratylus itself. In what follows I have made extensive use of Joe Sachs excellent translation, as well as that of the great H. N. Fowler. In order to emphasize certain themes or correct what I perceive to be misleading phrases, I have occasionally modified the translations. (In particular, I have opted for the more common correct over Sachs rightness for interpretive reasons that will become clear.) Occasionally I offer my own translations (whatever that means), though even in these cases, I often use the generally superior translations of Sachs and Fowler for orientation and verification.
It is recommended, but by no means necessary, that one keep the Greek text handy as one reads the following book, even if one does not read Greek. As will be seen, the principle behind Socrates view of language entails the material (which is to say visible and audible) similarities between words. It is therefore exceedingly helpful for understanding the text to be able to look upon these similarities as they occur. It is impossible to do so with any translation, no matter how good. The Cratylus, perhaps more than any other Greek text, demands to be looked at.
LIST OF TEXTUAL ABBREVIATIONS
The following is a list of the abbreviations used within the present work when referring to Plato s texts. Note that if a Stephanus number is cited without being preceded by one of the following abbreviations, the citation is from the Cratylus. Ap. (Apology) Epist. (Letters) Euthd. (Euthydemus) Euthr. (Euthyphro) Hipp. (Hipparchus) Lg. (Laws) Phd. (Phaedo) Phdr. (Phaedrus) Phil. (Philebus) Prot. (Protagoras) Rep. (Republic) Stat. (Statesman) Symp. (Symposium) Tht. (Theaetetus)
Introduction
This inquiry wishes to let Plato s Cratylus voice its own proper matter and, to the extent that is possible, articulate its own interpretative horizons. In order to accomplish this, the Cratylus must be read as it shows itself in its own light: as a comic dialogue. Such a reading, rather than attempting to circumscribe the Cratylus within a broader theory of Plato s thought as a whole -if it even makes sense to speak of such a thing-will attempt to allow the dialogue to announce its own themes and chart its own course, neither forcing it into a preconceived theoretical framework called Platonism nor striving to locate it within the development of such a framework. In a word, an attempt will here be made to receive Plato s Cratylus in the dialogically rich and exorbitantly funny manner in which it presents itself.
The purpose of this attempt is two-fold. To begin with, it wishes to stage an encounter with the dramatic and literary aspects of the Cratylus which, although essential to its philosophical trajectory, have tended to be downplayed or ignored within scholarship. In order to do this, strict attention must be paid to the play of the text, where this nebulous expression wishes to name those phrasings and dramatic moments of the text that are irreducible to the arguments they comprise. In other words, attention must be paid to the way of the Cratylus, the manner by which it both presents and obscures itself. 1 This shall, among other things, require attending to the comedic tenor of the Cratylus.
Secondly, an attempt will be made to let the Cratylus itself say what it has to say about the question of the correctness of names that is central to its pages. 2 Throughout the history of its reception the Cratylus has been read as Plato s serious attempt at offering a positive philosophy of language. 3 As will be seen shortly, such a reading misses the play of the text and the manner in which such play informs and determines the philosophical movement of the Cratylus. To foreshadow what can only develop through this inquiry as a whole, the Cratylus offers a comic view of - that is, a view that is itself comic in a manifold sense that will become clear, one that serves to situate humankind with respect to its proper limits. 4 Only by attending to this comic view, and the comic manner in which it is expressed, can one let the Cratylus say what it wishes to say about and the manner in which situates the human being in its proper place and defines the human condition.
To truly receive the Cratylus is thus to let the play of the text play itself out in all of its various and rich aspects. In order to accomplish this seemingly simple task one must first prepare oneself to receive the Cratylus in the excessively playful way that it presents itself. Such reception is only made possible by first bracketing and interrogating a number of interpretive presuppositions that have historically served to dampen the play of the Cratylus. In order to undertake such preparations, the following section shall strive to und