Abstract

Recent scholarship holds that unfulfilled definite descriptions do not play a role in motivating Russell’s theory of descriptions. In this paper, I make use of Gustav Bergmann’s ideal language method to develop an interpretation that restores the puzzle raised by ‘the King of France’ to the central place it once occupied in discussions of the theory of descriptions. In restoring ‘the King of France’, I show that Russell’s discussion of the problem it raises provides a decisive argument against Fregean senses, a claim that also runs counter to most recent work on the theory of descriptions