Saul A. Kripke

“Much of the philosophical work of the last half-century could not have existed without Naming and Necessity. If you read this marvelous book, you'll find out why.”David Chalmers, University Professor of Philosophy and Neural Science and co-director of the Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness, NYU “Naming and Necessity represents a turning-point in the development of modern philosophy. It showed how confusions in the philosophy of language had blocked progress in metaphysics, and it provided a model of systematic philosophical theorizing informed by innovations in logic.”Timothy Williamson, Wykeham Professor of Logic Emeritus, Oxford University Since first appearing in 1972, Saul Kripke's Naming and Necessity has shaped and continues to shape debates in metaphysics, the philosophy of language, and adjacent areas. It overturned long-established views concerning the relationships between names and descriptions and a priority and necessity, and catalyzed today's thriving essentialist metaphysics. This landmark work is here reissued for its 50th anniversary with a new preface by the author revisiting its central themes. If there is such a thing as essential reading in analytic philosophy, this is it.

This important new book is the first of a series of volumes collecting the essential articles by the eminent and highly influential philosopher Saul A. Kripke. It presents a mixture of published and unpublished articles from various stages of Kripke's storied career. Included here are seminal and much discussed pieces such as "Identity and Necessity", "Outline of a Theory of Truth", "Speaker's Reference and Semantic Reference", and "A Puzzle About Belief." More recent published articles include "Russell's Notion of Scope" and "Frege's Theory of Sense and Reference" among others. Several articles are published here for the first time, including both older works ("Two Paradoxes of Knowledge", "Vacuous Names and Fictional Entities", "Nozick on Knowledge") as well as newer ("The First Person" and "Unrestricted Exportation"). "A Puzzle on Time and Thought" was written expressly for this volume. Publication of this volume -- which ranges over epistemology, linguistics, pragmatics, philosophy of language, history of analytic philosophy, theory of truth, and metaphysics -- represents a major event in contemporary analytic philosophy. It will be of great interest to the many who are interested in the work of one its greatest living figures.

This important new book is the first of a series of volumes collecting the essential articles by the highly influential philosopher Saul A. Kripke. It presents a mixture of published and unpublished articles from various stages of Kripke's storied career. Included here are seminal and much discussed pieces such as "Identity and Necessity," "Outline of a Theory of Truth," and "A Puzzle About Belief." More recent published articles include "Russell's Notion of Scope" and "Frege's Theory of Sense and Reference" among others. Several articles are published here for the first time, including both older works "Two Paradoxes of Knowledge," "Vacuous Names and Fictional Entities," "Nozick on Knowledge" as well as newer "The First Person" and "Unrestricted Exportation". "A Puzzle on Time and Thought" was written expressly for this volume. The publication of this volume--which ranges over epistemology, linguistics, pragmatics, philosophy of language, history of analytic philosophy, theory of truth, and metaphysics--represents a major event in contemporary analytic philosophy. When completed, this collection will be a testament to one of philosophy's greatest living figures.

In this book Saul Kripke brings his powerful philosophical intelligence to bear on Wittgenstein's analysis of the notion of following a rule.

Reference and Existence, Saul Kripke's John Locke Lectures for 1973, can be read as a sequel to his classic Naming and Necessity. It confronts important issues left open in that work -- among them, the semantics of proper names and natural kind terms as they occur in fiction and in myth; negative existential statements; the ontology of fiction and myth (whether it is true that fictional characters like Hamlet, or mythical kinds like bandersnatches, might have existed). In treating these questions, he makes a number of methodological observations that go beyond the framework of his earlier book -- including the striking claim that fiction cannot provide a test for theories of reference and naming. In addition, these lectures provide a glimpse into the transition to the pragmatics of singular reference that dominated his influential paper, "Speaker's Reference and Semantic Reference" -- a paper that helped reorient linguistic and philosophical semantics. Some of the themes have been worked out in later writings by other philosophers -- many influenced by typescripts of the lectures in circulation -- but none have approached the careful, systematic treatment provided here. The virtuosity of Naming and Necessity -- the colloquial ease of the tone, the dazzling, on-the-spot formulations, the logical structure of the overall view gradually emerging over the course of the lectures -- is on display here as well.

Saul Kripke's Locke Lectures were delivered in Oxford in 1973. Delivered in Kripke's usual extemporaneous style, for years the lectures have only been available as a transcription that has been informally exchanged among philosophers. This volume, which publishes the lectures in book form for the first time, follows up on some of the themes on language that Kripke started to explore in his most famous work, Naming and Necessity. The first topic that Kripke examines is the relationship of naming to existence, in particular the problem of names that are empty i.e. which refer to non-existent objects such as fictional entities. The second major topic (or pair of topics) is that of speaker's reference and semantic reference. The lectures are full of philosophically rich ideas that have already been influential, and which will continue to intrigue and engage philosophers in book form.

Naming and Necessity has had a great and increasing influence. It redirected philosophical attention to neglected questions of natural and metaphysical necessity and to the connections between these and theories of naming, and of identity. This seminal work, to which today's thriving essentialist metaphysics largely owes its impetus, is here reissued in a newly corrected form with a new preface by the author. If there is such a thing as essential reading in metaphysics, or in philosophy of language, this is it.