"Naming and Necessity" has had a great and increasing influence. It redirected p
hilosophical attention to neglected questions of natural and metaphysical necess
ity and to the connections between these and theories of naming, and of identity
. This seminal work, to which today's thriving essentialist metaphysics largely
owes its impetus, is here reissued in a newly corrected form with a new preface
by the author. If there is such a thing as essential reading in metaphysics, or
in philosophy of language, this is it.
