Reference and Existence

Name: Reference and Existence
Author: Saul Kripke

by Saul Kripke

Kripke's essays on names, necessity, and the metaphysics of existence and identity across possible worlds

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About the author

Saul Kripke

American philosopher whose Naming and Necessity revolutionized the philosophy of language by arguing against descriptivist theories of reference and introducing the notion of rigid designation. His lectures at Princeton in 1970 changed the direction of analytic philosophy. He also produced major work in modal logic.

More by Saul Kripke

Naming and NecessityKripke's landmark work on names and necessity, arguing proper names are rigid designators, not descriptions
Wittgenstein on Rules and Private LanguageKripke's interpretation of Wittgenstein on rule-following, exploring the skeptical challenge to meaning itself
Philosophical TroublesCollection of Kripke's essays on language, logic, and metaphysics across decades of philosophical work
Speaker's Reference and Semantic ReferenceKripke's analysis of the distinction between speaker reference and semantic reference in linguistic meaning