Engaging Kripke with Wittgenstein: The Standard Meter, Contingent Apriori, and Beyond

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).