This study offers a comprehensive new interpretation of one of Plato's most enigmatic and controversial dialogues, the "Cratylus," showing it to present a complex and unified argument for a positive conclusion. Throughout, the book combines analysis of Plato's arguments with attentiveness to his philosophical method, including its "dramatic" or "literary" features; in particular, Socrates' extended etymological discourse, long an interpretive puzzle, is explained in terms of the various Platonic genres to which it belongs.

Preface; Introduction: The Argument of the Cratylus; I. From Convention to Nature; I.1 Conventionalism; I.2 Subjectivism and Private Naming; I.3 The Significance of Conventionalism; I.4 Against Conventionalism; I.5 The First Stage of Naturalism: Names as Tools; II. The Second Stage of Naturalism: Function and Genre in the Etymologies; II.1 Rational Reconstruction; II.2 The Inspiration Episode; II.3 The Agonistic Display; II.4 The Etymologies as Agôn; II.5 Plato and Parmenides on the Deceptiveness of Language ; III. The Third Stage of Naturalism: Mimetic Correctness; III.1 Beyond Etymology; III.2 Mimesis and the Elements of Language; III.3 Craft and the Foundations of Correctness; IV. Natural Correctness Re-examined; IV.1 The Dianomê Argument; IV.2 On the Correctness of Images; IV.3 The Two Cratyluses; IV.4 The Sklêrotês Argument ; IV.5 The Names of the Numbers; IV.6 Conclusions About Correctness; V. From Names to Things; V.1 Against the Study of Names ; V.2 Language, Knowledge and Flux; VI. The Cratylus and After: Names and Logoi; VI.1 The Seventh Letter and the Weakness of Language; VI.2 Logos and Knowledge; Chapter VII: The Cratylus and After: False Statement; VII.1 False Statement in the Cratylus; VII.2 The Sophist on Syntax; VII.3 The Sophist on False Statement; Bibliography; Index