FWIW, I personally find Putnam, Quine, and even Rorty far more interesting to read both now and from a historical perspective.
FWIW, I personally find Putnam, Quine, and even Rorty far more interesting to read both now and from a historical perspective.
to put it another way, i think it would be hard to take many other philosophers as deeply entrenched in a particular set of concerns and assumptions (take, like, derrida or godel) and as effectively press the points of their major work against the work of kant or aristotle or some other towering "we all claim her/him!" figure. "naming and necessity" speaks to kant in terms that need to be answered, which is way more than most publish or perish philosophy professors ever achieve in their lifetime (much less right away, in a lecture presenting a semantics based on modal logic!).
but yeah, the point is well taken. kripke is worth reading once / reading about. putnam is worth reading a lot.
In Kripkes favor I would also add that he was a great stylist, with warmth and humor and...flexibility of presentation. And that partly because of this NN and WRPL are perfect introductory philosophy texts for "generally educated" people. If I taught philosophy instead of working in tech, I'd probably help keep Kripkes legacy alive for that reason alone!
http://www.uvm.edu/~lderosse/courses/lang/Kripke%281979%29.p...
(putnam is cited in this paper as well, by the by)