Naming and Necessity

An absolutely essential piece of 20th-century analytic philisophy, and one that has no doubt inspired countless people to delve further into the philosophy of language and its various implications throughout the rest of philosophy. If you enjoy this, I also highly recommend Kripke’s other masterpiece, Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language.

Actually, many works written by analytic philosophers are difficult for beginners to understand. However, this one written by Saul Kripke is more easy and fun because it was originally three lectures delivered by the author at Princeton University. Therefore, many vocabularies and expressions in the book are not much technical, but more colloquial. If you want to read analytic philosophy like listening to an easy and fun talk, Naming and Necessity is the proper one for you.

Informal, highly readable, full of wit, this book is a transcript of three lectures delivered without notes at Princeton in 1970. Incisive, ground-breaking, enormously influential, it is a must read for anyone interested in the development of 20th century analytic philosophy and the topics of its title.

A while back I tried to find out more about a practice or movement in western philosophy termed 'analytic'. I understood it's quite widespread in some countries and often contrasted with some other practice(s) in western philosophy termed 'continental'. Now, that contrasting 'analytic' with 'continental' was not especially helpful needs little explanation. I then remembered 'Continental breakfasts' served in hotels around the world. These are usually contrasted with 'American breakfasts'. The difference, based on personal empirical experience, is that one type is without eggs, the other with eggs. At least 'Continental' and 'American' are both geographic terms, if both vague ones. And never mind that those 'Americans' (the reference may be to the US, I presume) may well have gotten those eggs with bacon from their German immigrants, of which there were many, so that an 'American' breakfast is 'Continental' after all. Oh well, I don't know if this is so, it's just a guess. At any rate, the 'continental breakfast' in turn reminded me of the old saying about the English who can't get their head around the various complexities that beset 'The Continent' because there's too much fog over the English Channel. Which I thought was a helpful pointer, since the 'analytic' practice seems to have originated with, or at any rate been popularised by, an English philosopher, one by the name of Russel. Ach so, I thought, the 'analytic' is a practice for English philosophers who can't get their head around the various complexities of the philosophies that have emerged 'on the Continent.' That's helpful, for if something is too complex for you to understand intuitively, because your mind is surrounded by too much fog, a logical way forward (yes, it's logic!) is to ANALYSE it, which means, breaking something into smaller parts so as to gain a better understanding of it. Of course, there is no guarantee that breaking anything apart will impart a better understanding of it--we recall the old story from India about the elephant--; the opposite may be just as true. If we take a clock, we can perhaps say that we gain a better understanding of HOW IT WORKS by taking it apart; however, we get a better understanding of WHAT IT DOES by putting it back together (for its individual parts do NOTHING). At any rate, our English 'analytic' philosopher breaks things apart to understand them better. Hopefully he is not one of those sorry people who are good at taking things apart, but not at putting them back together. Apparently if you break a glass you can't put it back together to serve as a glass again, but you can still use the shards to undertake prophetic predictions. Now, in my quest to learn more about this obscure philosophical practice of 'the analytical' I asked a few people who professed to be working in line with this practice if they could tell me what it is. Roughly speaking they said it concerns 'logic' and a method of utmost 'rigour'. Now, this was only somewhat helpful to me. That Logic is an important branch of western philosophy (at least since Aristotle) is undisputed; but why relabel it 'analytic philosophy'? It seems they were not giving me the full picture, for while the 'analytical' method seems to be applied to Logic, but also to other branches of philosophy. With respect to the 'rigour', well, I said, isn't that a hallmark of ALL philosophies, and they responded that those working in line with 'analytic' practice did not think that all western philosophies were equally rigorous, that some lacked the necessary rigour. So, it seemed that it was a matter of establishing a kind of a hierarchy of practices 'ranked' by their rigour, on the top of which would be the 'analytic'. Now, the most rigorous philosophical practice I know is Nietzschean perspectivism. I sure never thought that there could be anything more rigorous that that! Well, maybe there can. What do I know? But instead of trying to 'rank' all matter of practices by their degree of 'rigour' (what exactly is that, anyways?), I asked myself: did Nietzsche apply perspectivism to philosophical problems because it is especially rigorous? Yes, I think, but that's probably not his main reason. Did he because it is, in a manner, analytical (it doesn't break a thing apart to look at its parts; instead it looks at the whole from different angles, which is sort of a breaking down of the field of vision into partial, perhaps more focused segments)? Also possible, but again not his main reason. What strikes me about perspectivism is that it is, above all, PRODUCTIVE. It entails both analysis and synthesis, it looks at things from different angles, then overlaps or relates them to each other, and in doing so (if things go well) may not only look at the thing in an entirely novel light, but even create entirely new vistas, i.e., create something novel (a new concept, say). Which reminds me of Deleuze's definition of philosophy as the 'creation of concepts.' Philosophy, by that definition, is not, or not primarily, an analytical process, but a creative one. Of course, the creative process may entail an analysis, but it may also entail a synthesis, a dialectic, a perspectivism, or what have you. The analysis may yield ideas and hypotheses, and may be used to test and refine them, but without some manner of synthesising or sublimating them, it does not CREATE a thing (such as a concept). So it seems to me that what separates the 'analytic' practice from all the others (conveniently called 'continental', though I suppose that's convenient only if you happen to be English and have had that experience of being perennially fogged in), is that it is not creative or productive, but instead focuses on that aspect of philosophy practice that is analytical, and within that, specifically that which is analytical in accordance with a tightly defined set of rules or truth conditions. Let me put it this way: 'analytical philosophy' is not especially rigorous, but it is certainly especially rigid. ,Rigid' and ,rigorous' is not the same thing, even if they may derive from the same root (I don't know that they do, I'm just guessing). If philosophy is primarily a creative process (if one agrees with Deleuze, as I do), then we can think of building a house and needing a hammer (among other things), and the practice of 'analytical philosophy' being to query wether that hammer is indeed truly a hammer, and under what conditions it will fulfil the tasks allocated to it as hammer, etc. Gee, if you want to build a house it's certainly useful to know that the hammer is indeed a hammer and it will indeed hammer nails. YES! But most builders most of the time content themselves with the fact that the hammer was bought in a well known shop, or carries a well known product brand, or has been used successfully on previous construction sites, or simply looks and feels as if it makes a perfectly effective hammer. And then they happily go on and use it to build the house. 'Analytic' practitioners seem to be those builders who can never build a house because they never get past the stage of questioning whether the hammer is indeed a hammer, and as long as they are unable to agree that it is indeed a hammer no matter what, they can't proceed. 'Analytic philosophers' are thus stunted philosophers, both in terms of the topics they can philosophise about as well as in terms of the methods they can deploy in doing so. They may, of course, argue, that what they do is absolutely foundational, for how can you make any propositions or statements about anything unless you have, so they may say, analysed them exhaustively? In other word, you shouldn't build a house until you have solved all questions about the hammer exhaustively and satisfactorily. Well, it's a stance one can take. Do not even think about driving a car unless you have first demonstrated that you can win a Formula 1 race (but since that involves getting into a car, a race car, you can't do it--so don't drive!). I was getting to the point of comparing 'analytical' philosophy with that medieval branch (apparently a big one at one point, but I do not know if this is true) of philosophy that had it that only matters of theology and biblical exegesis were properly subjects of philosophising, and that it was worthwhile to argue about how many angels exactly could dance on the head of a pin. If science is the new religion, the 'analytic' is the new medieval scholarship. Is it? I asked my analytic practitioner friends if they could name some of the foundational books of 'analytic' movement. Initially they found the question strange. What most philosophers do when they want to understand, say, the thought of Hegel, they read Hegel. Or so I thought. Finally they came up with some philosophers and works they considered linked to their practice. Russel, as 'founder'. Frege, a logician. Wittgenstein, who I already knew a little (without knowing that he had been coopted by the 'analytic' folks; he does't seem to fit my definition above very well, because his philosophy is actually eminently creative). The positivists like Popper et al. The pragmatists like Dewey (though they came before Russel, if I am not mistaken). Quine. Rawls (who I thought to be a sort of a Neo-Kantian). Kripke. Which brings me, finally, to this book. 'Naming and Necessity' was mentioned as one of the eminent texts for this practice. And I finally read it. And I really liked it, at least the first two lectures as well as parts of the addenda and the intro. The third lecture is sadly poorly written and argued (someone else already commented on it in this stream below, I agree with that reader). The first two lectures are a great read and I learned a lot about the 'analytic' practice, which I feel Kripke, well, puts into practice admiringly. A very pleasurable read. I shall read more commended books by writers associated with the 'analytic' and, I'm pretty sure, in doing so I shall finally get the hang of it.

As a philosopher, this is one of the best books in the language of philosophy field and written by one of the most influential western philosophers.

Names as rigid designators contrary to Russell and Frege.

Kripke's work has influenced many philosopher throughout the decades.

Awesome