Other Works

• Cratylus

  - Recommended translation: "Cratylus," trans. C. D. C. Reeve in Plato: Complete Works, ed. J. M. Cooper (Hackett, 1997).  
  Excerpt: Hermogenes Here is Socrates; shall we take him as a partner in our discussion? Cratylus If you like. Hermogenes Cratylus, whom you see here, Socrates, says that everything has a right name of its own, which comes by nature, and that a name is not… More

Commentary

• Physics and Tragedy: On Plato’s Cratylus

  - Benardete, Seth, "Physics and Tragedy: On Plato's Cratylus," The Argument of the Action: Essays on Greek Poetry and Philosophy, eds. Seth Benardete, Ronna Burger, and Michael Davis, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2000.
  The Cratylus seems to be a caricature of a Platonic dialogue. It gives us Socrates as seen in the distorting mirror of an alien inspiration. It begins as a farce and ends as a tragedy: Socrates finally invokes the “ideas” like so many dei ex… More

• Names and Nature in Plato’s Cratylus

  - Barney, Rachel, Names and Nature in Plato's Cratylus, New York: Routledge, 2001.
  Excerpt: The Cratylus is Plato’s most extended discussion of language—more precisely, of ‘the correctness of names’—and one of his most enigmatic dialogues. As such, it has attracted a daunting mass of interpretive debate, but there is… More