Necessity de dicto and de re starting with Alvin Plantinga

Abstract

This contribution aims to enhance one aspect of Alvin Plantinga's thought: the recovery of the classical distinction between de dicto and de re necessity. Plantinga makes this recovery to show that de re necessity is not reducible to de dicto necessity. By this, he intends to defend the reasons for essentialism. For our part, we will illustrate this author's debt to the classical tradition (Aristotle, Boethius, Thomas), his relation to the debate contemporary to him, but especially the relevance of this distinction. Indeed, it turns out to be decisive in avoiding those fallacies that – in various ways – have tried to justify necessitarianism.