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Full-Text Articles in History of Philosophy
Ideal And Ordinary Language In Plato's Cratylus, Franco Trivigno
Ideal And Ordinary Language In Plato's Cratylus, Franco Trivigno
The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter
Interpreters of Plato’s Cratylus are faced with a puzzle. If Socrates’ etymologies (397a-421c) are intended to be parodies, as many have thought,[1] what is the status of the imitation theory of letters (421c-427d), which provides the theoretical foundation for etymology and, as some have thought, indicates Plato’s ambition to construct an ideal language?[2] In this paper, I focus on three questions: [1] whether Plato thought that imitation provided a suitable basis for an ideal language; [2] whether Plato thought that the development of an ideal language would be philosophical possible or desirable; [3] whether he thought that ordinary …
We Should Always Call The Receptacle The Same Thing: Timaeus 50b6-51b6, Christopher Buckels
We Should Always Call The Receptacle The Same Thing: Timaeus 50b6-51b6, Christopher Buckels
The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter
Plato’s Timaeus is a challenge to understand and to interpret, but its central ontological innovation, a third kind in addition to the standard Platonic categories of Being and Becoming, is, even according to Timaeus himself, a murky and difficult topic. I endeavor to shed a meager light on this shadowy entity, the Receptacle of all Becoming, by examining an argument Timaeus gives for the claim that “we should always call it the same thing” (50b6-7).[1] This claim comes immediately after the famous gold analogy, about which I will say only a few words, and so it also closely follows …