Saul Kripke has been a major influence on analytic philosophy and allied fields for a half-century and more. His early masterpiece, Naming and Necessity, reversed the pattern of two centuries of philosophizing about the necessary and the contingent. Although much of his work remains unpublished, several major essays have now appeared in print, most recently in his long-awaited collection Philosophical Troubles. In this book Kripke’s long-time colleague, the logician and philosopher John P. Burgess, offers a thorough and self-contained guide to all of Kripke’s published books and his most important philosophical papers, old and new. It also provides an authoritative but non-technical account of Kripke’s influential contributions to the study of modal logic and logical paradoxes. Although Kripke has been anything but a system-builder, Burgess expertly uncovers the connections between different parts of his oeuvre. Kripke is shown grappling, often in opposition to existing traditions, with mysteries surrounding the nature of necessity, rule-following, and the conscious mind, as well as with intricate and intriguing puzzles about identity, belief and self-reference. Clearly contextualizing the full range of Kripke’s work, Burgess outlines, summarizes and surveys the issues raised by each of the philosopher’s major publications.  Kripke will be essential reading for anyone interested in the work of one of analytic philosophy’s greatest living thinkers.

Table of Contents:
Preface page vii Acknowledgments x Introduction 1 Background 2 Plan 7 1 Naming 11 Mill vs Frege 11 Error and Ignorance 19 Metalinguistic Theories 24 The Historical Chain Picture 28 Reference vs Attribution 33 2 Identity 37 Modal Logic and its Archenemy 37 Rigidity 45 The Necessity of Identity 50 Resistance 53 The Contingent a Priori 56 3 Necessity 59 Imagination and the Necessary a Posteriori 59 Natural Substances 64 Natural Kinds 69 Natural Phenomena and Natural Law 71 The Mystery of Modality 74 4 Belief 78 Direct Reference 78 Puzzling Pierre 83 Poles Apart 88 Counterfactual Attitudes 91 Empty Names 98 5 Rules 104 Conventionalism 105 Kripkenstein 108 The Analogy with Hume 110 The Skeptical Paradox 116 The Skeptical Solution 120 6 Mind 128 Physicalism 128 Functionalism 131 Against Functionalism 134 Against Physicalism 136 The Mystery of Mentality 140 Appendix A Models 143 The Logic of Modality 143 Kripke Models 147 The Curse of the Barcan Formulas 150 Controversy and Confusion 153 Appendix B Truth 157 Paradox and Pathology 158 Kripke vs Tarski 159 Fixed Points 165 The Intuitive Notion of Truth 170 Notes 175 Bibliography 204 Index 211