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From Dedekind to Gödel pp 97–118Cite as

Frege’s Letters

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Part of the book series: Synthese Library ((SYLI,volume 251))

Abstract

Gottlob Frege’s isolation is almost legendary. Michael Dummett portrays him as having been a man who was perhaps too original to have ever been capable of working with others, “of sailing on any sea on which other ships were in sight1....”, and someone who “never seems to have learned from anybody, not even by reaction....”1 Dummett’s Frege felt isolated, misunderstood and unlistened to in the philosophical and mathematical world of his time, led a “life of disillusionment and frustration”.2 In addition to this, we have Bertrand Russell’s well-known claims that Frege’s work had gone virtually unnoticed until Russell discovered it in 1900.3

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Notes

  1. Dummett, Michael: 1981a, Frege: Philosophy of Language, Duckworth, London, p. 661.

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  2. Dummett: 198la, p. xxxi.

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  3. Russell, Bertrand: 1946, A History of Western Philosophy,Allen and Unwin, London, p. 858, for example.

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  4. Sluga, Hans: 1980, Gottlob Frege,Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, pp. 41–42; Dummett 1981a, p. xxxi.

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  5. Frege, Gottlob: 1979, Philosophical and Mathematical Correspondence, Blackwell, Oxford, p. 52, cited as PMC within the text. I cite as BW the German edition Frege: 1976, Nachgelassene Schriften und Wissenschaftlicher Briefwechsel, vol. 2, Meiner, Hamburg; and as PW Frege: 1979, Posthumous Writings, Blackwell, Oxford.

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  6. Kreiser, Lothar: 1973, `Review of Nachgelassene Schriften’, Deutsche Zeitschrift fir Philosophie 21, 523.

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  7. Sluga: 1980, pp. 69–76.

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  8. Dummett 1981a, p. 661.

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  9. Cantor, Georg: 1885, `Review of Frege’s Foundations’, Deutsche Literaturzeitung VI(20), 728–729 and Frege’s 1885 reply in the same journal, VI(28), 1030.

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  10. Mohanty, J. N.: 1982, Husserl and Frege, Indiana University Press, Bloomington.

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  11. Russell, Bertrand: 1919, Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy, Allen and Unwin, London, p. 25.

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  12. Reading the notes in the English and German editions of the correspondence one finds information about Frege’s drafts of letters to Russell, Wittgenstein, Jourdain, Hilbert, Peano, Pasch, Huntington, Zsigmondy, Linke, Jones, and Speiser, among others.

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  13. The relevant notes in the English and German editions show that letters from Frege to Marty, Husserl, Jourdain and Hilbert were found in various archives; letters to Liebmann and Peano had been published; Dingler’s wife had copies of her husband’s correspondence; Russell had photographic copies of Frege’s letters to him.

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  14. For a more complete account of the fate of the letters see: Veraart, Albert: 1976, `Geschichte des wissenschaftlichen Nachlasses Gottlob Freges und seiner Edition. Mit einem Katalog des ursprünglichen Bestands der nachgelassenen Schriften Freges’, in M. Schirn (ed.), Studien zu Frege, vol. 1, Fromann-Holzboog, Stuttgart, Bad Canstatt, pp. 49–106; Scholz, Heinrich: 1936, `Der wissenschaftliche Nachlass von Gottlob Frege’, in Actes du congrès international de philosophie scientifique, vol. VIII: Histoire de la logique et de la philosophie scientifique, Hermann, Paris, pp. 24–30; Kreiser, Lothar: 1974, `Zur Geschichte des wissenschaftlichen Nachlasses Gottlob Freges’, Ruch Filozoficznej 33(1), 42–47, and Kreiser, 1973. I am obliged to give approximate figures since so many letters fall into more than one category. For example, many letters that were lost were recovered, or partially recovered through photocopies, drafts, typescripts, some of the letters Scholz inventoried were only known through other letters, letters Frege wrote to Wittgenstein were only very recently discovered, etc.

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  15. Dummett, Michael: 1981b, The Interpretation of Frege’s Philosophy, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, pp. 7–27; Dummett, 1981a, pp. 629–664.

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  16. Dummett: 1981a, pp. 685–686; PMC, p. 130.

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  17. Scholz’s successors were able to locate letters Frege had written to Edmund Husserl, Anton Marty, David Hilbert, and Heinrich Liebmann.

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  18. Dummett: 1981b, pp. 21–23.

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  19. Dummett: 1981a, p. 658.

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  20. Dummett: 1981a, p. 686.

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  21. Dummett: 1981a, 657–658; Dummett: 1981b, pp. 9–10, 21–27.

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  22. Dummett: 1981a, pp. 664, 686; Dummett: 1981b, pp. 22–23.

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  23. Compare the list in Frege, Gottlob: 1989, `Briefe an Ludwig Wittgenstein’, Grazer philosophische Studien, 33/34, 8 with the list on BW, pp. 265–268.

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  24. Frege, Gottlob: 1980, `Appendix to Basic Laws of Arithmetic II’, in Peter Geach and Max Black (eds.), Translations from the Philosophical Writings, Oxford, Blackwell, pp. 214–224.

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  25. Frege, Gottlob: 1986, Foundations of Arithmetic,Blackwell, Oxford; Burge, Tyler: 1984, `Frege on Extensions of Concepts from 1884 to 1903’, The Philosophical Review XCIII(1) (January), 3–34.

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  26. Frege: 1986, §105.

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  27. Frege, Gottlob: 1964, Basic Laws of Arithmetic, University of California Press, Berkeley, pp. 3–4.

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  28. Frege: 1980, p. 214; PW, pp. 181–82.

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  29. Frege: 1980, p. 214; Sluga, pp. 162–175.

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  30. Grattan-Guinness, Ivor: 1971, `The Correspondence Between Georg Cantor and Philip Jourdain’, Jahresbericht der Deutschen Mathematiker-Vereinigung 73, 111–130.

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  31. Grattan-Guinness, Ivor: 1977, Dear Russell-Dear Jourdain: A Commentary on Russell’s Logic Based on his Correspondence with P. Jourdain, Duckworth, London, pp. 6–7.

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  32. Russell, Bertrand: 1903, Principles of Mathematics,Norton, New York, §100; PMC, pp. 133–134.

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  33. Kreiser: 1973, p. 522.

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  34. Husserl, Edmund: 1970, Husserliana, Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, pp. 447–452.

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  36. Schuhmann: 1977, pp. 19, 22; Husserl, Edmund: 1975, Introduction to the Logical Investigations: A Draft of a Preface (1913),Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, p. 37; Schmit, Roger: 1981, Husserls Philosophie der Mathematik,Bouvier, Bonn, pp. 40–48, 58–62.

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  38. Rang, B: 1981 `Zermelo’s Discovery of the Russell Paradox’, Historia Mathematica 8 (February), 15–22.

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  40. Dummett: 1981b, pp. 21–22; Sluga: 1980, pp. 168–176.

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  41. Sluga: 1980, pp. 170–171; Scholz: 1936, pp. 28–29.

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  42. Dummett: 1981b, pp. 7–8.

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  45. Veraart: 1976, 91.

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  46. Veraart: 1976, pp. 91, 94; Burge: 1984 discusses this thoroughly.

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  47. Veraart: 1976, p. 95.

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  48. Burge: 1984, pp. 13–14; Sluga: 1980, p. 169.

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  49. Scholz: 1936, p. 29; Veraart: 1976, p. 99.

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  50. Kreiser: 1973: p. 522.

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  51. Frege: 1989, pp. 19–26.

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  52. Veraart: 1976, p. 92.

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  53. Dummett: 1981a, p. 661.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Paris, France

    Claire Ortiz Hill

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  1. Claire Ortiz Hill
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  1. Boston University, USA

    Jaakko Hintikka

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© 1995 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht

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Hill, C.O. (1995). Frege’s Letters. In: Hintikka, J. (eds) From Dedekind to Gödel. Synthese Library, vol 251. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8478-4_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-8478-4_5

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