In the Socratic dialogue “Cratylus” Socrates and his friend Hermogenes attempt to discover if language has any real meaning. We know that words can take on or lose meaning depending on context and time. But can the word “door” actually mean something absolute. Can language convey more than our momentary cultural attribution of particular sounds.

Socrates wants to find the origin of names and words, and believes that words, if they are to have any meaning at all, must have a connection to ultimate reality. He comments,

So just as a shuttle is a tool for dividing warp and woof, a name is a tool for giving instruction, that is to say, for dividing being.

“Giving Instruction” can be interpreted as giving us wisdom. Words must be a clue to reality, and how we use words must convey something about how we perceive meaning in the world. Language then, cannot belong onlyto an individual, but neither is it a purely democratic medium. We don’t get to vote on the meaning of words. Rather, language is a cultural possession, a trust, and a storehouse of meaning.

So Cratylus is right in saying that things have natural names, and that not everyone is a craftsman of names, but only someone who looks the natural name of a thing and is able to put its form into letters and symbols.

But Socrates also understands that language has a fluid aspect to it, and no one time, place, or word, can fully grasp ultimate wisdom and pure being.

Perhaps you didn’t that [the names] are given on the assumption that the they name are moving, flowing, and coming into being. . . . Wisdom (phronesis) is the understanding of motion (phoras noesis) and flow. Or it might be interpreted as taking delight in motion. . . . Wisdom signifies the grasping of this motion.

In other words,language and meaning can bend, but not break. Understanding this difference is one of the keys to any healthy life and culture.

I open this post with this blurb about language because as Macbeth transpires, the title character and Lady Macbeth lost their hold on the nature of reality. Both of them can no longer trust their perception. Is a dagger really in front of Macbeth or not? Has the ghost of Banquo really appeared to him or not? Does Lady Macbeth actually have blood on her hands or not? Both of them lose their ability to perceive the world around them, and this only adds to the confusion of their internal moral compass. For them, the meaning of words, the meaning of sight, and the meaning of life itself, all disappear.

One of Macbeth’s most famous soliloquies in the play reads,

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing.

Some see this as evidence of Shakespeare’s pessimism or even nihilism, but we must remember that this speech is given by the villain of the play at the very end of his moral decline. At this point in the story, Macbeth has completely abandoned the moral and social ties that bind him to his fellow man and to creation. As a result, he can make no sense of his experience of the world. Other characters around him affirm the possibility of creating a sensible state once again, but not Macbeth. He does not wish to die but confirms that he has no particular reason to live. He is trapped in a world without meaning of his own making.

One common theme in Shakespeare’s work is the confusion and decay that happens when the normal structure of society gets upended. Shakespeare belonged to a world where the basic order of society was regarded as divinely given, or at least partly divinely ordained. Modern democracies do not share this belief, seeing the social hiearchy as continually fluid, Some believe that all hiearchy should be continually dismantled and the social oder continually refreshed. But even if we do not share the convictions of Shakespeare and his contemporaries, we can observe the effects of a social order that lacks clear delineation.

Our lives are governed mostly by routine. Some find this stifling. I believe (along with Edmund Burke and others) that routine actually liberates. When we need to think and rethink all of our actions and decisions, it brings paralysis, not freedom. Shared routines allow us to easily perceive meaning in the actions of others. Routines also free us up to think and ponder, for example, the meaning of a Shakespeare play. We would not have this freedom if we had to overly scrutinize the meaning of our wardrobe, to give just one example. We would be stuck wondering if a polo shirt or t-shirt would be more appropriate to do the day’s tasks.

Without routine and established order, we would exist in a world where we could not perceive meaning. All standard social cues would be abandoned. Communication with those outside your social and ideological circle would be impossible. Macbeth and Lady Macbeth both confuse the meaning of words during their descent into madness and death, especially around the meaning of the words “man” and “woman.”

The “good news” in this situation is that nature itself cannot abide this situation for very long. Meaningful order and hiearchy must reassert itself. This is what Macbeth briefly experiences before his death, when “Birnham Wood” comes to fight with him.

Macbeth’s simple plot hides an important message for us, not just about morality, but about the structure of society as a whole, and what role language plays in the construction of society.

Dave