Language

Use in the book

At 159a Socrates links having an opinion with being able to express it because Charmides can speak Greek. Linguistic competence makes participation possible; it does not guarantee a correct definition. The ensuing failures are partly failures to explicate what ordinary expressions mean and how their senses interact.

The third definition makes this explicit. At 161d Socrates separates what its author meant from how the words sound under his proposed literal construction. Critias then distinguishes making, doing and working, appealing to Hesiod (163b–c). Socrates compares this with Prodicus' distinctions between names and allows Critias to assign terms as he likes, provided he clearly identifies what each denotes (163d). The concession rejects a merely verbal quarrel without granting that a stipulated vocabulary makes its philosophical consequences true.

The last complaint returns to naming: they cannot find to which existing thing the lawgiver assigned the name temperance (175b). The question about the referent survives the defeat of the proposed accounts. It does not imply that the word has no ordinary use or that its first historical inventor can be identified.

A useful reading distinction is therefore threefold: knowing how to use Greek, understanding a particular formulation, and justifying the account expressed. The dialogue passes from the first through the second toward the third, without establishing that any two are automatically equivalent.

Places to read

1. 159aGreek competence permits an opinion to be expressed
2. 161d–162b2Words distinguished from intended meaning
3. 163b–e2Prodicean distinctions and permitted verbal stipulation
4. 175bThe unresolved name and its intended referent
5. 175b (apparatus)Later manuscripts offer ὀνοματοθέτης in place of νομοθέτης

Translation in this edition

At 175b the edition retains “lawgiver” for nomothetēs and explains the variant “name-giver” in a note. At 163d “word” is often the clearest rendering of onoma because the issue includes verbs of doing and making, not only proper names.

νομοθέτης

Attested: νομοθέτης (nomothetēs). Lawgiver, here imagined as the original giver of a name; Socrates says they have failed to discover which reality received the name “temperance”. References: 175b. Lexical identification: lemma: νομοθέτης. See Language and naming.

ὄνομα

Attested: ὄνομα / ὀνομάτων / τοὔνομα (onoma / onomatōn / tounoma). Name or word; ranges from written personal names to disputed terminology and the naming of temperance. References: 161d, 163d, 175b. Lexical identification: lemma: ὄνομα. See Language and naming.

ὀνομάζω

Attested: ὀνομάζειν (onomazein). Name or call; Socrates reformulates Critias’ terminology about doing good things. References: 163e. Lexical identification: lemma: ὀνομάζω. See Language and naming.

κάλει (kalei)

Call or summon; elsewhere the verb names or designates something, as in the dispute over doing and making. References: 155b. Lemma: καλέω. See Language and naming.

τίθεσθαι (tithesthai)

Set or assign; Socrates allows Critias to choose names provided that he makes their referents clear. References: 163d. Lemma: τίθημι. See Language and naming.

φέρῃς (pherēis)

Apply or refer; Socrates asks what thing Critias applies each name to. References: 163d. Lemma: φέρω. See Language and naming.

Use in the book

Alcibiades supplies language as a counterexample to Socrates' dismissal of the many as teachers. He learned Greek from them but cannot name his teacher. Socrates accepts the point. The inability to identify one master therefore does not by itself disprove learning; competence can be acquired through a distributed community.

The agreement of ordinary speakers is tested through action as well as words. Asked for stone or wood, they say the same things and reach toward the same objects. They agree with themselves and one another, and cities do not fight about these identifications. This stable common practice makes them plausible teachers of the relevant usage.

The argument then distinguishes identifying a kind from expert judgment about its members. Knowing which things are horses does not establish which horses run well; recognizing people does not establish which are healthy or sickly. Socrates uses that difference to block the inference that ordinary speakers can teach justice simply because they teach language. Shared vocabulary is not a substitute for expertise in evaluating what that vocabulary describes.

The passage should not be turned into a full theory of linguistic meaning or a proof that moral words lack meaning whenever people dispute them. The many do use words for justice, but their disagreement undermines Alcibiades' appeal to them as teachers of just conduct. The issue is the epistemic authority of instruction, not the possibility of speaking at all.

Places to read

1. 110e–111aAlcibiades introduces Greek speech as learning from the many
2. 111b–111d2Verbal and practical agreement supports ordinary identifications
3. 111d–112d23Expert discrimination and justice exceed the demonstrated competence

Translation in this edition

“Speak Greek” is narrower and more faithful here than an unrestricted “know language.” At 111c μανθάνω means Socrates understands what Alcibiades intends by the example; it does not claim that Socrates is now learning Greek.

ἑλληνίζω

Attested: τὸ ἑλληνίζειν (to hellēnizein; 111a). At 111a: Ordinary Greek speech learned from the many without a single named teacher, the valid counterexample Alcibiades offers. Lexical identification: lemma: ἑλληνίζω. See Language.

λίθος

Attested: λίθος (lithos; 111b). A stone; agreement about which object is a stone illustrates ordinary shared linguistic competence. Lexical identification: lemma: λίθος. See Language.

ξύλον

Attested: ξύλον (xylon; 111b). Wood or a piece of wood; paired with stone as an ordinary object speakers reliably identify, unlike contested justice. Lexical identification: lemma: ξύλον. See Language.

Use in the book

Joubert contrasts adjusting doctrine to school language with adjusting it to common or refined language. Choisi adds selection without simply returning to scholastic terminology. The Homer remark similarly contrasts language understood by contemporaries with a language of books that excludes some readers. Its sweeping assertion about Homer belongs to Joubert’s evaluation. A later distinction assigns languages to heart, soul and intelligence, making language the manner in which a power manifests itself rather than only a national vocabulary.

Places to read

1. I, p. 259, entry 1, ¶1Common and refined language offer alternatives to school language.
2. II, p. 672, entry 7, ¶1Language of the world is contrasted with language of books.
3. II, p. 781, entry 1, ¶1Heart, soul and intelligence are assigned distinct languages.

Translation in this edition

The English translation uses refined for choisi and retains the initial “That” in the Homer fragment. The brackets in the final witness mark qualified contextual English readings of damaged French; they do not establish recovered source wording.

Jargon and technical words

French: jargon; technique.

Jargon expresses a self-made semblance of ideas rather than something clear and eminently literary. Joubert immediately marks his own definition as needing improvement and proposes differences from technical words without completing them. The lexicon therefore preserves both the criticism and the unfinished distinction: it cannot use this fragment to condemn all specialized vocabulary.

Places to read: II, p. 671, entry 5, ¶1.

Purism

French: purisme.

Purism becomes excessive when it excludes an expression that harms neither sound, sense, good taste nor clarity. The preceding contrast gives taste a natural basis and tone a fashionable one: what violates taste must always be excluded, while nonconformity to tone need not always disqualify. The English translation retains purism and the sharp pusillanimity judgment. The qualification not always prevents a simple claim that tonal fitness never matters.

Places to read: II, p. 748, entry 7, ¶1; II, p. 748, entry 7, ¶2.

Neologism and paradoxism

French: néologisme; paradoxisme.

The entire witness is a reciprocal equation: neologism equals paradoxism, then paradoxism equals neologism. The English translation uses the unusual paradoxism for paradoxisme, preserving both equality signs and their reversed order. The fragment offers no examples or explanation; it cannot support a detailed historical definition or a claim that every new word expresses a logical contradiction.

Places to read: II, p. 890, entry 8, ¶1.

Use in the book

Traherne acknowledges both the reach and the limitation of words. Language, miracles, and apparitions cannot establish religion independently of a clear sight of the truth of things. Speech must bring the reader toward the realities it communicates; verbal authority alone does not complete that encounter.

The Psalms offer another kind of language: the heavens declare glory everywhere. Their universal witness becomes intelligible through meditation, then gives way to praise of divine law. The movement is not from meaningless nature to meaningful words, but between mutually illuminating manifestations. When discussing figurative writing in IV.78, Traherne likewise asks readers to find a serious interior meaning beneath luxuriant poetic expression.

Places to read

1. III.45Language requires clear apprehension of the things to which it bears witness.
2. III.72Psalm 19 presents cosmic testimony as speech heard throughout the earth.
3. IV.78Poetic language is interpreted for the serious account of inward transformation it contains.

In this edition

Voice and speech in III.72 come through a quoted Psalm. The heavens’ testimony is figurative language with an epistemic claim, not literal human utterance.

Use in the book

Nature's intimate language in March 1833 is available only when inward perception receives more than outward forms. Later a lilac's trembling leaves seem to murmur words of consolation. The narrator marks the likeness carefully: the sound appears to him as a language. He does not transcribe a literal botanical message. Such passages explore what it means to feel addressed by something that cannot speak in ordinary human terms.

Human language may either sustain or damage contact. François's poetry is natural speech, an unforced flowing from the person; the notebook is imagined as the unique companion who understands the weak soul's language. Social conversation, by contrast, exposes favored thoughts in broken and embarrassed speech, leaving them bruised. The obstacle is not necessarily the absence of words, but their inability to preserve the inward relation that gave them value.

Guérin is also attentive to the reach of particular terms. “Poetry” is adopted because no other word covers his thoughts; “imagination” is expressly enlarged to name inward life. These are conscious acts of naming rather than carelessness about distinctions. The bilingual opening's delight in “at home” likewise recognizes that an expression may gather a whole experience more compactly than its literal components suggest.

Places to read

1. 10 July 1832 · ¶1The English phrase “at home” is valued for gathering the whole feeling of chez soi.
2. 15 March 1833 · ¶1Nature's intimate language is distinguished from exterior form.
3. 7 May 1833 · ¶1Natural speech is the mark of François's unforced poetic gift.
4. 7 May 1834 · ¶2The lilac's murmur seems to become a consoling language under the pressure of the speaker's need.
5. 7 September 1834 · ¶1Timid speech deforms thoughts that had been cherished in private.

Translation in this edition

The English uses “language” for “langage” in the inward-eye passage and “speech” for “parole” in François’s portrait, but also translates the lilac’s “langage” as “speech.” “Parole naturelle” in the François portrait is consequently a mode of speaking, not a claim that French itself is more natural than another language.