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A Critical Introduction to the Philosophy of Gottlob Frege

2008; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 29; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/01445340701217078

1464-5149

Guillermo E. Rosado Haddock,

Philosophy and Theoretical Science

critical introduction to the philosophy of Gottlob Frege is based on 25 years of teaching Frege's philosophy at the University of Puerto Rico.It developed from an earlier publication by Rosado Haddock on Frege's philosophy which was, however, only available in Spanish.This introduction to Frege is meant to steer a path between the two main approaches to Frege studies: on the one hand, we have interpretations of Frege which portray him as a Neo-Kantian and thus as some kind of Idealist, on the other, we have writings like those of Dummett in which Frege is portrayed as a type of "philosophical Adam", i.e. as completely separated from his philosophical tradition.Rosado Haddock succeeds in placing Frege's thinking into a (slightly) broader philosophical context -mainly by reference to his contemporary Edmund Husserl -while also avoiding a (Neo-) Kantian reading of Frege's work.The structure of the book (which contains less than 150 pages of prose) follows chronologically Frege's writing.In this way, Rosado Haddock leads the reader through the whole of Frege's philosophy while highlighting important changes and developments in Frege's thought from the Begriffsschrift to his Grundgesetze and other later writings.Chapter 1 introduces us to the core philosophical themes of Frege's Begriffsschrift with a special emphasis on Frege's notions of "conceptual content" and "judgeable content".Here, Rosado Haddock, anticipates further discussion and points towards changes and developments of Frege's core notion of "identity", "function" and "content".Chapter 2 and 3 focus on Frege's Grundlagen der Arithmetik.Chapter 2 discusses Frege's methodological principles as outlined in Frege's introduction and his criticisms of psychological, naturalistic and Kantian approaches to the philosophy of mathematics.Chapter 3 focuses exclusively on Frege's own Logicist account of arithmetic while emphasising differences between Frege's views and Kantian or Neo-Kantian views.Chapter 4 and 5 are concerned with Frege's highly influential papers published in 1891-2, "Funktion und Begriff", " Über Sinn und Bedeutung" and " Über Begriff und Gegenstand" while also drawing on other relevant material from Frege's Nachlass, his correspondence and his magnum opus Grundgesetze der Arith-