Engaging Kripke with Wittgenstein

This volume draws connections between Wittgenstein's philosophy and the work of Saul Kripke, especially his Naming and Necessity. Saul Kripke is regarded as one of the foremost representatives of contemporary analytic philosophy. His most important contributions include the strict distinction between metaphysical and epistemological questions, the introduction of the notions of contingent a priori truth and necessary a posteriori truth, and original accounts of names, descriptions, identity, necessity, and realism. The chapters in this book elucidate the relevant connections between Kripke's work and Wittgenstein, specifically concerning the standard meter, contingent apriori, and rule-following. The contributions shed light on how Kripke's philosophical outlook was influenced by Wittgenstein, and how mainstream analytic philosophy and Wittgensteinian philosophy can fruitfully engage with one another. Engaging Kripke with Wittgenstein will be of interest to philosophers working on Wittgenstein, Kripke, and the history of analytic philosophy.

Martin Gustafsson is Professor of Philosophy at Åbo Akademi University, Finland. He is working mainly within the philosophy of language, philosophy of action, and the history of analytic philosophy. He has published papers on the philosophy of Elizabeth Anscombe, J. L. Austin, Stanley Cavell, Donald Davidson, Gottlob Frege, Ian Hacking, W. V. O. Quine, Gilbert Ryle, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and others. Oskari Kuusela is Associate Professor in philosophy at the University of East Anglia. His main philosophical interests relate to philosophical methodology, the history of analytic philosophy, and ethics. His monographs include The Struggle Against Dogmatism (2008) and Wittgenstein on Logic as the Method of Philosophy (2019). He is also the co-editor of several edited collections on Wittgenstein, including The Oxford Handbook of Wittgenstein (2011). Jakub Mácha has published on philosophy of language and classical German philosophy. He is the author of Wittgenstein on Internal and External Relations: Tracing All the Connections (2015) and The Philosophy of Exemplarity: Singularity, Particularity, and Self-Reference (2023). He co-edited several volumes: Wittgenstein and the Creativity of Language (2016), Wallace Stevens: Poetry, Philosophy, and Figurative Language (2018), and Wittgenstein and Hegel: Reevaluation of Difference (2019).

Introduction Martin Gustafsson, Oskari Kuusela, and Jakub Mácha 1. On the Alleged Incompatibility Between Wittgenstein and Kripke Panu Raatikainen 2. Real Names Sebastian Sunday Grève 3. Kripke's Wittgenstein and Kripke's Causal-Historical Picture of Reference Alexander Miller 4. Modality: Wittgenstein's Tractatus versus Saul Kripke Sanford Shieh 5. Does It Make Sense to Say That the Standard Meter Is One Meter Long? Alexandre N. Machado 6. Who Is Afraid of Truth Gaps? Wittgenstein and Kripke on the Standard Meter Jakub Mácha 7. Kripke's Standard Meter - A Religious Dream? Christian Helmut Wenzel 8. Overlooked Distinctions: The Mirage of Contingent A Priori Oskari Kuusela 9. How Long Is the Standard Meter in Paris? Cora Diamond 10. The Illusion of Intransitive Measurement: Diamond, Kripke, and Wittgenstein on the Standard Meter Martin Gustafsson 11. Kripke's Transcendental Realist Fantasy, and Wittgenstein's Transcendental Idealism, After All Avner Baz 12. The Ancient Roots of Wittgenstein's Liberatory Philosophy: How Revisiting the Ancients Can Illuminate the Difference Between Wittgenstein's Philosophy of Freedom and Kripke's Philosophy of Mere Anarchy Rupert Read