Saul Kripke
contemporaryAnalytic Philosophy1940 – 2022
Saul Kripke was an American philosopher and logician, widely regarded as one of the most important philosophers of the twentieth century. His work on modal logic, the semantics of proper names, and the necessary a posteriori fundamentally reshaped analytic philosophy, particularly philosophy of language and metaphysics.
Notable Achievements
1
Developed the causal-historical theory of reference for proper names, challenging Fregean descriptivism
2
Proved the completeness of modal logic at age 17 and developed Kripke semantics for modal and intuitionistic logics
3
Argued for the existence of necessary a posteriori truths and contingent a priori truths in Naming and Necessity
4
Formulated Kripke's Wittgenstein paradox concerning rule-following in Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language
5
Contributed to the theory of truth and the resolution of the liar paradox via his fixed-point construction