SAUL KRIPKE AND PHENOMENOLOGY. THE PREFACE TO THE TRANSLATION OF S. KRIPKE'S ARTICLE "VACUOUS NAMES AND FICTIONAL ENTITIES"

Abstract

This paper aims to introduce the translation of Saul Kripke's influential text to Russian-speaking readers. It shows that the work of American philosopher should be of interest and be useful among the phenomenologists especially. Kripke criticizes the reference theory of Russell and Frege and Hintikka's logical analysis of the "cogito ergo sum" statement. In both cases he defends his own views on the predicate of existence and shows the change of its status depending on the kind of entity in every particular proposition. The mode of quantifier depends on a given situation which is described in the statement and in some cases the quantifier determines the conditions of the statement's truth-value. Kripke shows that classical reference theories have no universal meaning; without a set of special stipulations they can only be applicable under limited conditions. He appeals to fiction and myth and writes about fictional characters as a special kind of abstract entities which exist in virtue of the activities of human beings and their interrelations. Kripke scrutinizes the possible relations between a fictional character and his historical prototype. The battery of his examples, his own reference theory including an entity as its core, his ontology of fictional reality and sophisticated philosophical technics are extremely useful materials to explain basic problems of classical phenomenology such as reduction, modification of a phenomenon in imagination, and regional ontologies. All of this provides tools helpful for the practical work of a phenomenologist. In particular, Kripke's investigations and especially his examples about higher level fictions (fictions within fictions) could be used in the framework of the phenomenology of language when one needs to describe the interlocations of an author, a reader, and a fictional reality before undertaking noetic and noematic analysis.