ABSTRACT
A central part of metaphysics is concerned with the nature and identity of things. Saul Kripke is one of the most famous philosophers of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. He was educated at Harvard, taking an undergraduate degree in mathematics, then taught at Harvard, Rockefeller and Princeton universities. In recent years two competing theories have emerged. According to one theory, ordinary objects persist by perduring. According to the alternative theory, ordinary objects persist by enduring. According to the perdurantist, ordinary objects are four-dimensional entities, with temporal parts as well as spatial ones. A spatio-temporal object persists through time by having different temporal parts at different times. On the endurantist view, ordinary objects have no temporal parts and are 'wholly present' at all times at which they exist. The perdurantist and the endurantist will treat differently of our puzzles.
