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The Cratylus' main concern is to outline and evaluate the competing views of language held by two characters, Hermogenes and Cratylus, who disagree about whether convention or nature (respectively) are the source of onomastic correctness. Hermogenes has been thought to hold two radically different views by different scholars, one extreme conventionalism whereby all names are correct relative to their speakers, and another modest conventionalism according to which distinct naming actions – establishment and employment – explain why some names are correct and others are not, depending on the speaker. In this paper I argue that, though Hermogenes ultimately endorses a conventionalism of the latter kind, it is a mistake to assign him this position from the outset. Rather, to understand the structure of the conversation about conventionalism, we must view Hermogenes' position, and Socrates' understanding of it, as developing instead of settled. For it is only by discussing the matter that Hermogenes comes to express a moderate conventionalist view and Socrates comes to appreciate the position Hermogenes actually holds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Euthydemus is included neither in Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker by Diels-Kranz nor in Sofisti. Testimonianze e frammenti by Untersteiner nor in Early Greek Philosophy by Laks and Most. Likewise, the great twentieth century works on the Sophists do not give space to him, at best mentioning him briefly. Yet Euthydemus is the author of a fragment, which was quoted by Plato in his Cratylus, and on which again there is no modern study. This paper sets out to study this fragment in depth, to review and discuss the various translations, both existing and possible, to study the context of Plato's quotation, to clarify the exact meaning and the theoretical scope of this important fragment, and lastly to place Euthydemus in the Protagorean tradition, of which he is a notable product. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At Alcibiades I, 133b-c, the reader expects, but does not according to the MSS find, the return of the mirror-motif that had supposedly explained the true meaning of the Delphic injunction. Hence it remains unclear why anything viewed within the soul should act in any way that resembles a mirror. I argue that the substitution of a single letter in one word, about which the manuscripts and modern scholars in any case disagree, can restore the necessary reference to a reflective surface, though not specifically to a mirror, since the term for a mirror could only be applied to sight. A failure to understand the underlying intertextual allusion to Cratylus 408c had resulted in a safe but unsatisfactory substitution by Late Antiquity, and other modifications followed thereafter in an effort to give meaning to the text. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study contrasts two writings to demonstrate how semiotic discourses serve as sources of inspiration leading beyond academic responses to the creative composition of fictional texts. It will be shown how Saussure's theory of the sign purveyed the raw material for a short story by Peter Bichsel and how Plato's Cratylus provided the blueprint for two central characters in a novel by Joseph Roth. Using the conspicuous example of Bichsel's short story as a springboard to outline the creative technique called semiomimesis, the indepth analysis of Roth's Hotel Savoy affords a full explanation of what constitutes semiomimetic art. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]