Cratylus: The Dialogues of Plato

The Dialogues of Plato: Cratylus by Plato. Translated by Benjamin Jowett. Cratylus is the name of a dialogue by Plato. Most modern scholars agree that it was written mostly during Plato's so-called middle period. In the dialogue, Socrates is asked by two men, Cratylus and Hermogenes, to tell them whether names are "conventional" or "natural", that is, whether language is a system of arbitrary signs or whether words have an intrinsic relation to the things they signify. The Cratylus has alwa...