Abstract

Quine, in his 1980 forward to From a Logical Point of View wrote: ‘The time for revision is past. The book is dated, and its dates are 1953 and 1961’ (p. viii). Quine wrote modestly about himself, as he almost always did. His point—not stated loudly—was that the book was now an important historical document, and so its author had lost the right to tamper with it. The book I’m reviewing may seem different. Although Kripke’s Locke Lectures were given in 1973, the book has appeared in print forty years later. Kripke writes: ‘… the transcript has been available at the Oxford University library for many years … and it has had, since then, a modest life of its own, passed on among members of the profession, sometimes even being discussed and criticized in print’ (pp. xi-xii). Kripke understates the transcript’s impact. It influenced everyone in the profession who wrote on these topics, if only because it was read carefully and absorbed by so many philosophers working in this area. Thomasson, on a back-blurb, writes: ‘For decades getting a copy of these lectures has been a holy grail for philosophers working on fiction’. And in the Oxford advertising, included with my review copy of the book, I read: ‘At last in print—the most famous unpublished philosophy manuscript of recent decades’.