cratylus

Updated: May 15, 2025

See the Cratylus of the divine Plato. Indeed, said Epistemon, I saw this way of syllabizing tried at Xaintes at a general procession, in the presence of that good, virtuous, learned and just president, Brian Vallee, Lord of Douhait.

François Rabelais - Gargantua and Pantagruel, Illustrated, Book 4

We are led by Plato himself to regard the Timaeus, not as the centre or inmost shrine of the edifice, but as a detached building in a different style, framed, not after the Socratic, but after some Pythagorean model. As in the Cratylus and Parmenides, we are uncertain whether Plato is expressing his own opinions, or appropriating and perhaps improving the philosophical speculations of others.

Plato - Timaeus

For in early youth he became a student of Cratylus and of the school of Heraclitus, and accepted from them the view that the objects of sense are in eternal flux, and that of these, therefore, there can be no absolute knowledge. Then came Socrates, who busied himself only with questions of morals, and not at all with the world of physics.

J. (John) Marshall - A Short History of Greek Philosophy