Jaakko Hintikka on Truth
In the Spring of 1967, Jaakko Hintikka published two contributions to the journal Synthese, of which he was then the editor, that have proved to be of singular importance to the further development of analytic philosophy. The first was Donald Davidson’s well known essay on “Meaning and Truth,” the second Jean van Heijenoort’s no less influential note on “Logic as Calculus and Logic as Language.” In publishing these two programmatic statements side by side Hintikka as editor of Synthese helped to propel analytic philosophy into an entirely phase of its evolution. He did not, of course, foresee this at the time nor did he anticipate that the two pieces would eventually also become crucial to his own philosophical thinking.