Naming and Truth in Archaic Greece

Naming and Truth in Archaic Greece

If language is the house of thought, then names are, so to speak, its bricks. Human beings cannot really trust their own skill as builders of walls, yet they cannot refrain from arranging those bricks, however makeshift the structure may be. Every time we define, express our expectations, praise, or criticize, we name—and even rename. Whether naming a newborn child, giving a nickname to a close friend, or changing the name of a famous street, we act as heirs to a primordial impulse to name.

This primordial inheritance can be traced back, from a trans-civilizational perspective, to Archaic Greece. The Greek poet, thinker, and ordinary person named their children, streets, inventions, creations, the sacred and the worldly—in short, everything—in order to construct a universal language that reflected the social life of their inhabited world. At the same time, within the context of the culture of “competition” (agôn), which left its mark throughout the Greek world, this tendency toward naming acquired a distinctive character. Greek poets used names as a special mechanism for “praising” the victorious individual. Pindar masterfully employed this mechanism to construct a poetic truth, while those who grew up enchanted by Pindar’s verses, such as Plato, reconsidered the relationship between truth and names in the dialogue Cratylus. If we are still captivated today by the magic of the bricks we continue to arrange, it means that we remain under the influence of the poet’s lingering voice.

Series: Philosophy

Dimensions: 16.5 × 23.5 cm

Page Count: 464

ISBN: 978-975-995-667-7