Kripke's Wittgenstein

A philosophical exploration of Saul Kripke’s interpretation of the later Wittgenstein and the extensive debate it has generated since the 1980s.

The book investigates Kripke’s reading of Wittgenstein presented in his eminent book Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language(1982). It explores various aspects of Kripke’s Wittgenstein’s view and explicates key criticisms of it offered by numerous leading philosophers since the 80s.

This book offers a comprehensive examination of Kripke’s influential reading of the later Wittgenstein presented in Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language (1982), together with the principal objections raised by more than twenty philosophers. It introduces the key ideas that frame Kripke’s sceptical challenge, then analyses the main components of the ‘sceptical argument’ Kripke attributes to Wittgenstein and elucidates the ‘sceptical solution’ he takes Wittgenstein to propose as an alternative to classical realism. It also explores how both the sceptical problem and an additional ‘special problem’ arise in the attributing sensations and in traditional approaches to the problem of other minds. The concluding chapters survey the major responses to Kripke’s interpretation developed by philosophers working on the topic since the 1980s, including John McDowell, Simon Blackburn, Gordon Baker, Peter Hacker, Colin McGinn, Crispin Wright, Paul Boghossian, Philip Pettit, Barry Stroud, Hannah Ginsborg, Alexander Miller, George Wilson, Scott Soames, Noam Chomsky, Paul Horwich, as well as Norman Malcolm, Donald Davidson, David Lewis, Christopher Peacocke, Jerry Fodor, David Stern, Alex Byrne, Ruth Millikan, Hilary Putnam and John Searle.