Saul Kripke stands as a central figure in contemporary logic and philosophy. His influential work spans across fields such as the philosophy of language, metaphysics, epistemology, and set theory. Much of his groundbreaking thought circulates through manuscripts and recordings, underscoring his enduring impact. Kripke is recognized among the ten most important philosophers of the last two centuries.
The book has significantly influenced contemporary philosophy, serving as a foundational text for discussions on language and meaning. It explores critical concepts that have shaped philosophical discourse over the last fifty years, highlighting its essential role in understanding the relationship between names and the objects they denote. Readers will discover its profound impact on various philosophical debates and the clarity it brings to complex ideas.
This work can be read as a sequel to Kripke's classic Naming and Necessity, confronting important issues left open in that work and developing a novel approach to questions concerning empty names and existence. It provides along the way novel treatments of fictional and mythological discourse, the pragmatics of definite and indefinite descriptions and the language of sense data.
In this book Saul Kripke brings his powerful philosophical intelligence to bear on Wittgenstein's analysis of the notion of following a rule.
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.