Philosophical Writings

by Gottlob Frege, Peter T. Geach, Max Black

Translations from the Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege by Peter Geach, Max Black.

Genres: Philosophy, Logic, Mathematics, Nonfiction

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1952

About the author

Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege (German: [ˈɡɔtloːp ˈfreːɡə]) was a German mathematician, logician and philosopher. He is considered to be one of the founders of modern logic and made major contributions to the foundations of mathematics. He is generally considered to be the father of analytic philosophy, for his writings on the philosophy of language and mathematics. While he was mainly ignored by the intellectual world when he published his writings, Giuseppe Peano (1858–1932) and Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) introduced his work to later generations of logicians and philosophers.

Reviews

[Silvio Curtis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gottlob Frege invented symbolic logic and developed a theory of linguistic meaning whose purpose was to let him formulate mathematics in terms of logic. This book includes some essays which I had read in college last semester and many others. The ones I had read dealt with his logical symbolism and his distinction between the sense or immaterial meaning of an expression and its reference or the concrete (physical or non-physical) object that it names. The most helpful of the other selections explained his idea of functions and objects, which gave some insight into his odd thesis that the True and the False are objects and that complete sentences are names of them. The writings also include some harsh criticism of those of Frege's contemporaries who disagreed with him about the nature of mathematics.

[Larry · Rating 5 out of 5]

I always find myself rereading this at some point. Today it was Sense and reference again and Concept and object. My mind is quite settled on Kant’s object not having much in common with Frege’s sense (but the parallel brings up interesting, i mean fascinating stuff I’m trying to lay out) and I read in Claude Imbert that Heidegger wrote reviews of late Frege articles so that’s good for my tummy

[Paul Hampson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Essential reading for anyone interested in the 'linguistic turn', or in philosophical logic. Contains the key papers 'Sense and Reference' 'Function and Concept' and 'Concept and Object', as well as 'Negation', and other selections.

[Tejas · Rating 3 out of 5]

quickly browsed.

not a fan of Frege's writing style.