Saul Kripke 1940 – 2022
Saul Kripke was an American philosopher and logician and one of the most consequential analytic philosophers of the second half of the twentieth century. Already in his teens he produced major results in modal logic, including the semantics for modal systems that bears his name. His lectures Naming and Necessity overturned the dominant descriptivist theory of reference, defending the view that proper names are rigid designators and reviving necessary a posteriori truth as a serious philosophical category. His later book Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language advanced an influential, controversial reading of Wittgenstein.
Key facts
- Nationality
- American
- Era
- Contemporary
- Movements
- Analytic
Selected quotes
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Attributed to Saul Kripke:
“A name is a rigid designator: it picks out the same object in every possible world in which that object exists.”
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Attributed to Saul Kripke:
“Identity statements between proper names, if true, are necessarily true.”
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Attributed to Saul Kripke:
“Necessity is a metaphysical, not an epistemological, notion.”
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Attributed to Saul Kripke:
“A statement can be necessary and yet known only a posteriori.”
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Attributed to Saul Kripke:
“There can be no fact about meaning over and above the totality of past and present uses.”