"What is the nature of the relationship between words and the objects they refer to?"
This question is surely central to philosophical inquiry, since errors of language inevitably
breed errors of investigation. Plato was one of the first people to ask the question. His answer, in
the Cratylus, has attracted a great deal of scholarly disapproval, and very little genuine philosophical
interest. Worse yet, scholars generally think that Plato's views about philosophy of language were
confined to one (or, at best, two) dialogues, and that his philosophy of language played no particular
role in the metaphysical theories that we associate with "high Platonism."
In this dissertation, I will contest all those common views. I will argue that philosophy of
language played a genuine role in Plato's metaphysical doctrines in the Republic, and that these
doctrines are borne out by at least half a dozen other dialogues. I will argue that Plato's views on
linguistic reference are, far from being obscure or outlandish, roughly comparable to certain widely
accepted modern views about linguistics, and reasonably plausible. I will argue that Plato's cave
image dramatizes his philosophy of language - and his animosity against the sophists - in a
remarkable and previously unappreciated way.
