>>25237286
It depends on what you think you're supposed to be getting out of it. Socrates openly doubts both the certainty and substance of the etymologies throughout, a point that goes over Hermogenes' head, but the two subjects that come up with some frequency are relativism (both that of the Pre-Socratic Heraclitus, but also implicitly that of Protagoras; a reading of the section of the Theaetetus about knowledge as sense-perception might make that clear) and revelation (see how often Socrates credits certain findings to Euthyphro's divine inspiration rubbing off on him, but also Cratylus' position is described as prophecy by Hermogenes). It's been a while since I've read it, but I suspect that the end of the dialogue, when it turns to lawgivers, is related to revelation and ties the dialogue to both the second half of the Phaedrus (about rhetoric, with frequent discussions on lawgivers and the courts) and the Laws (which starts with the Athenian Stranger asking a Cretan and Spartan if their laws were handed down by men or gods).

Because so many doubts are openly expressed about the etymologies, and given the possibly ironic appeals to Euthyphro for coming to several of them, I can't say that I actually know what's going on with them, but I suspect they're not as much the point in themselves. But maybe the obliqueness of the dialogue isn't enough to recommend finishing it if you were hoping for some laser-focused and sensible on language.

>>25237391
I think the points you're raising in the first paragraph are all interesting. Unfortunately, it seems that most of the dialogue really is just philological speculation, and if I'm interested in those things I'm probably better off looking at the secondary literature.

Jowett speculates that
>"the age was very busy with philological speculation; and many questions were beginning to be asked about language which were parallel to other questions about justice, virtue, knowledge, and were illustrated in a similar manner by the analogy of the arts."
and further that
>"Moreover, in this, as in most of the dialogues of Plato, allowance has to be made for the character of Socrates. For the theory of language can only be propounded by him in a manner which is consistent with his own profession of ignorance. Hence his ridicule of the new school of etymology is interspersed with many declarations “that he knows nothing,” “that he has learned from Euthyphro,” and the like. Even the truest things which he says are depreciated by himself. He professes to be guessing, but the guesses of Plato are better than all the other theories of the ancients respecting language put together."

So apparently the etymological discussions were taken seriously by the Greeks, and Socrates' ironic comments are meant to obliquely acknowledge the speculative nature of the discussion. I guess they had no notion of where language came from, which might lead one to believe that the study of languages is like the study of nature. For us modern people, it's simply a kind of technology we developed and there's no need to speculate about arbitrary design decisions. I'm not sure if I believe this but it's a coherent explanation.

>>25237449
>So apparently the etymological discussions were taken seriously by the Greeks, and Socrates' ironic comments are meant to obliquely acknowledge the speculative nature of the discussion.
I think that risks being too pat. Socrates argues against the conventionalism Hermogenes thinks may be true, as well as against the naturalism of Cratylus (and the Theaetetus has several points where Socrates emphasizes that knowing a name doesn't entail knowing the nature of something, so that's something Plato seems consistent on). Put that together with Socrates' association of the study of etymologies with the sophist Prodicus, and it seems more evident than not that the study of etymology would look to Plato like something sub-philosophic at best; of interest to historians, but not to philosophers.

Now, at least part of the purpose of going through the etymologies would be to offer a reductio response to Cratylus by setting out examples, but that doesn't explain the length and extent. On the other hand, there are asides expressed very densely throughout the etymological section, and those asides tend to be more important (like 400d-401a or 403b-404a). There's also the possibility that Plato's doing something that we and Jowett tend to miss in light of modern canons of coherence; the order of the subjects in the etymology section, for whatever reason, matches the order of subjects very closely in the Timaeus, and why that should be the case is pretty obscure to me at least, and I expect to most people reading Plato.

>>25237286
I’ve never seen anyone rate Cratylus highly on this board. It is generally believed to be a satiric parody of now lost linguistics studies from antiquity. The word origins Socrates comes up with have intentionally humorous origins (ex, he says Homer said “men call the river Scamander” so naturally women would call the Scamander by a different name - obv Socrates taking Homer at his word). It’s only uninteresting becaue the context for this discussion and whatever he was trying to do here is now almost entirely lost.

>>25237391
You could maybe relate this dialogue to the Forms because if justice/ chair/ etc have metaphysical significance then the words designating them also have so, particularly in the Greek language. Socrates was a chauvinistic Greek who saw his language as divinely inspired.

>>25237449
>> >"the age was very busy with philological speculation; and many questions were beginning to be asked about language which were parallel to other questions about justice, virtue, knowledge, and were illustrated in a similar manner by the analogy of the arts."

That is just a basic explanation of what the dialogue is about. We can obviously infer it is mocking theories of language. We just like with the sophists, don’t know what they actually were since there’s no primary source to weigh it against.

>>25237286
>Should I persevere through the rest of Plato's Cratylus?
I honestly don't know why you would. The hypothesis may be convincing but it's also objectively incorrect, so you're just sort of wasting your time on bad logic.

>>25237286
>Should I persevere through the rest of
no, go masturbate then drive to the gas station and get slushie to pour some captain morgans in

The truth that's so horrifying when you realise it because it completely shatters the credibility of philosophy and all of its proponents who almost universally hail Plato as a genius is that the latter was in fact a stupid retard by modern standards. His dialogues are so full of fallacies, bizarre tangents, overexplanations of obvious inferences, non-sequiturs, and so on, that even through the dazzling glare of his universal venerability an honest eye can discern how utterly mediocre his work is.

Apart from the example you yourself listed, take Euthyphro, where Plato goes on for page upon excruciating page about the logical distinction between the propositions 'Something is good because it is loved by the gods' and 'Something is loved by the gods because it is good'. This distinction should be clear enough to anyone with even a middling IQ, but it apparently impressed Plato so much that he had to explore it for 20 suicide-inducing pages, going on and on and on and on!

Or take Phaedo, where he attempts to argue that reincarnation is true on the grounds that everything comes from its opposite. Something lighter, says the genius Plato, must have come from something darker; something warmer from something colder; and so on; hence something alive comes from something dead; so our souls exist in the underworld! The first time I read this I literally could not believe it. I was in shock. Anyone who tried to pass this off as an argument should be executed for sophistry, and here was the reverend Plato doing it! What!!!!

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>>25239020

The ending is the most important passages in all philosophy, everything before that is the least important passages in all philosophy.
Timaeus does the same in the opposite direction where last third is utterly meaningless.
He's just pulling your leg, it's an exercise of endurance, do you deserve to learn the deepest mystery?

>>25239020
>overexplanations of obvious inferences
>it's obvious to us today 2000 years later!
This is autism, a failure of empathy. "Whatever I already know is obvious, if I don't know it it can't be worth knowing."

>>25239020
>Something lighter, says the genius Plato, must have come from something darker

It's impossible to see something without contrast.
To exist means to stand out, of there's no background of negative space then there is no foreground. This is also how binocular vision sees depth. Phaedo is full of simplified analogies for more deeper truths because it's an introductory dialogue.
To out it simply: There is no light, or rather illumination, without shadow. There are no shadows without light.
>inb4 muh midday equator sun cast no shadow
for (you) yes. Again you repeat solipsism. Presuming your particular situation is universal.

>>25239934
To preemptively refute any retard reply.
If you could see all wavelengths you would see nothing at all.
The eye sees by being blind, casting a shadow in itself, to almost all light. Such that to see at all it sees almost nothing of what can be seen.
This how focusing a lense also works, you blurr everything but that one single object.
Ergo, darkness creates light (as in sight).

>>25239925
>>25239934
He's just ragebaiting, not even worth addressing such a Neil DeGrasse Tyson-style spiel