Tópicos, Revista de Filosofía ISSN: 0188-6649
[email protected] Universidad Panamericana México Mualem, Shlomy LANGUAGE AS PICTURE IN PLATO’S CRATYLUS AND WITTGENSTEIN’S TRACTATUS Tópicos, Revista de Filosofía, núm. 33, 2007, pp. 9-35 Universidad Panamericana Distrito Federal, México Available in: http://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=323028509001 How to cite Complete issue Scientific Information System More information about this article Network of Scientific Journals from Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain and Portugal Journal's homepage in redalyc.org Non-profit academic project, developed under the open access initiative i “shlomy” — 2008/10/6 — 21:25 — page 9 — #9 i i i LANGUAGE AS PICTURE IN PLATO’S CRATYLUS AND WITTGENSTEIN’S TRACTATUS Shlomy Mualem Bar Ilan University
[email protected] Abstract The aim of the following article is to compare Plato and Wittgenstein’s doctrines of language as a picture, focusing on the Cratylus and the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Despite the fact that the Cratylus deals with the correct- ness of names while the Tractatus attends to the nature and structure of propo- sitions, the study demonstrates, focusing on Cratylus 421c-427e and Tractatus 4.01-4.12, that the language-as-picture doctrines in these texts closely resemble each other in terms of their basic properties and structures. The comparison comprises four aspects: (1) the structure of elements and their form; (2) the cor- respondence between language and reality; (3) the possibility of falsehood; and (4) the method of verification. Key words: philosophy of language, Picture Theory, Wittgenstein, Plato, analyti- cal philosophy.