Naming and Necessity

Three lectures given without notes at Princeton in January 1970, published first in a collection and then as a book. Kripke attacks the view, associated with Frege and Russell, that a proper name means the same as a description that picks out its bearer. If 'Aristotle' meant 'the teacher of Alexander', it would be necessarily true that Aristotle taught Alexander, yet he might never have done so. Names are rigid designators, referring to the same object in every possible situation. In place of the description theory Kripke sketches a causal picture: a name is fixed by an initial baptism and passed along from speaker to speaker. He separates necessity, a metaphysical notion, from a priori knowledge, an epistemic one, and argues for necessary truths known only by experience, such as that Hesperus is Phosphorus or that water is H2O, and for contingent truths knowable a priori. He extends the account to natural kinds and ends with an argument against identifying pain with a brain state.

It changed the philosophy of language and metaphysics in a few hours of lecturing, and it remains unusually readable for a work of its importance.