Kripke and Wittgenstein on proper names

Abstract This paper argues that Kripke's and Wittgenstein's respective accounts of proper names are fundamentally the same. Specifically, it is argued that Wittgenstein's later philosophy is not inconsistent with Kripke's theory in the ways that Kripke himself sometimes claimed it was; on the contrary, it contains all of the key ingredients of Kripke's main line of argument. If this is correct, a significant part of the recent history of Anglophone philosophy may have to be reevaluated. In particular, Wittgenstein's critique of the idea that words stand for things played an important role in the continuing decline of metaphysics in the middle of the twentieth century, whereas Kripke's account of rigid designation led to the revival of metaphysics during the second half of the century. It is still commonly assumed that these influential contributions—Wittgenstein's critique and Kripke's account—are in fact inconsistent with each other; however, this paper argues the opposite.