Note 83 — Chapter XXXI · KRATYLUS.
Reading edition
One cannot but notice how Plato, shortly after having declared war against the Relativity affirmed by Protagoras, falls himself into that very track of Relativity when he comes to speak about actual language, telling us that names are imposed on grounds dependant on or relative to the knowledge or belief of the Name-givers. Kratylus, pp. 397 B, 399 A, 401 A-B, 411 B, 436 B.
The like doctrine is affirmed in the Republic, vi. p. 515 B. δῆλον ὅτι ὁ θέμενος πρῶτος τὰ ὀνόματα, οἷα ἡγεῖτο εἶναι τὰ πράγματα, τοιαῦτα ἐτίθετο καὶ τὰ ὀνόματα.
Leibnitz conceived an idea of a “Lingua Characterica Universalis, quæ simul sit ars inveniendi et judicandi” (see Leibnitz Opp. Erdmann, pp. 162-163), and he alludes to a conception of Jacob Böhme, that there once existed a Lingua Adamica or Natur-Sprache, through which the essences of things might be contemplated and understood. “Lingua Adamica vel certé vis ejus, quam quidam se nosse, et in nominibus ab Adamo impositis essentias rerum intueri posse contendunt — nobis certé ignota est” (Opp. p. 93). Leibnitz seems to have thought that it was possible to construct a philosophical language, based upon an Alphabetum Cogitationum Humanarum, through which problems on all subjects might be resolved, by a calculus like that which is employed for the solution of arithmetical or geometrical problems (Opp. p. 83; compare also p. 356).
This is very analogous to the affirmations of Sokrates, in the first part of the Kratylus, about the essentiality of Names discovered and declared by the νομοθέτης τεχνικός