Frege
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Overview
What is the number one? How do we know that 2+2=4? These apparently simple questions are in fact notoriously difficult to answer, and in one form or other have occupied philosophers from ancient times to the present. Gottlob Frege's conviction that the truths of arithmetic, and mathematics more generally, are derived from self-evident logical truths formed the basis of a systematic project which revolutionized logic, and founded modern analytic philosophy.
In this accessible and stimulating introduction, Joan Weiner traces the development of Frege's thought from his invention of a powerful new logical language in Begriffsschrift, through his explication of his project in the Foundations of Arithmetic and famous papers such as 'On Sense and Reference', to the brilliant, but ultimately doomed, presentation of the system in Basic Laws of Arithmetic. At each stage, she discusses Frege's motivations in a way which enables the modern reader to appreciate the originality, clarity, and profundity of his thought.
Past Masters is a series of concise, lucid, authoritative introducitons to the thought of leading intellectual figures of the past whose ideas still influence the way we think today.
Editorials
From the Publisher
"Frege in Perspective is a remarkable and important book. It presents a revolutionary account of Frege's project which I believe will transform our understanding of Frege, and so of the origins of analytic philosophy. The view presented, while bold, is textually and philosophically sophisticated and very carefully made out. No one who writes on Frege can afford to ignore it."-Robert Brandom, University of Pittsburgh
"Joan Weiner reads Frege without assuming that his problems and concepts anticipate ours or that he is reacting to his historical context. This leads her to conclude that Frege's notion of reference differs importantly from that of today's philosophy of language and that his supposed Platonist declarations little support contemporary Platonism in the philosophy of mathematics. More radically, she holds that the bulk of Frege's so-called philosophical writings should be seen as attempting to elucidate his symbolic language and not as metaphysical and linguistic theories. Weiner deploys intricate, careful, and well-documented argument to defend these conclusions."-The Philosophical Review
"Like other scholars, Weiner registers more than a few reservations about Frege's works. However, as the title of her book shows, she believes that Frege's work still has great perspectives, and that present and future scholars will continue to derive from it threads for further meditations and researches. With great care, Weiner examines many of Frege's revolutionary theses and many of the problems he set out; approves or questions his solutions of these problems; and adds to Frege's solutions her own."-Semiotica