Putting Frege in Perspective

Abstract

Until recently, there have been few attempts to read the work of Gottlob Frege in historical context. Many of those who read Frege’s writings today believe that the usual reasons for reading a piece of philosophy in historical context do not apply to those pieces Frege produced. This may be a result of the popularity of two views concerning the nature of Frege’s work. One is that Fṙege’s work has no serious philosophical background. This view seems somewhat plausible given that Frege was trained as a mathematician, corresponded with mathematicians throughout his career, and seems to have done work only in the quite specialized areas of philosophy which are directly concerned with mathematics. According to the story which goes with this view, Frege began with philosophy of mathematics (investigating problems involved with his mathematical work which were not exactly mathematical problems) and saw that some work in the philosophy of logic (and later in the philosophy of language) was necessary. Thus, almost accidentally, Frege was pulled deeper and deeper into the problems of philosophy. If this story were true, it would not be unreasonable to assume that his worries and problems would not have been muddied by the sort of philosophical assumptions and philosophically loaded terms whose prevalence in other philosophical writings makes it so important that one considers their historical context.