Frege und die kontinentalen Ursprünge der analytischen Philosophie – GOTTRIED; SCHLOTTER (M)

1. INTRODUCTION

The purpose of Frege und die kontinentalen Ursprünge der analytischen Philosophie (Frege and the continental sources of Analytic philosophy) by Gottfried Gabriel and Sven Schlotter is to fill an interpretative gap in the clarification of Frege’s ties with his time (p. 1). Performing this task is not merely of historical interest, but is an indispensable element for an adequate systematic understanding of Frege’s thought (p. 10). Ignorance of the context is the basis of the standard view, instilled by Dummett, which views Frege as a philosopher of language. In this sense, the principal result of Gabriel and Schlotter’s investigation is to change this image of Frege by showing that his interest was principally epistemological, and that from there, his thought consequently necessarily developed into logic and philosophy of language. It is, then, a matter of demonstrating Frege’s ties with his philosophical-historical setting and of doing so, not in some generic way, but by documenting the unequivocally made assertions by means of concrete quotations.

Gabriel and Schlotter’s work, however, extends beyond the limits of a reinterpretation of Frege’s ideas on a historical-philosophical basis to present itself as a paradigm of a new way of considering the relationship between Analytic and Continental philosophy which, instead of emphasizing an absolute break between the two, stresses the continuity of the former with respect to the latter and, in so doing, the continental roots of Analytic philosophy (p. 10, p. 13). In this sense, their book about Frege must be seen as part of a far-reaching movement which extended to Wittgenstein and Carnap.

A. Exposition¹

2. The continental roots of Fregean logic

Gabriel and Schlotter underscore the connections between Fregean logic and traditional logic, demonstrating that there has been a steady evolution in Germany since Kant’s time (p. 10) and punctiliously laying bare the sources of certain fundamental Fregean ideas (p. 66ff.).

One of the main questions about logic which has arisen since Kant’s time due to Hegel’s having expounded on it is whether this discipline is merely formal, or whether it is material (and, possibly, metaphysical) in nature. Regarding this question, a controversy referred to as “the logical question” (“die logische Frage”), in which a good number of XIXth century German logicians took part, arose between Trendelenburg and Herbart. This controversy would prove decisive for the Fregean idea of logic, which displays evidence of strong Trendelenburgian inspiration and leans toward a material conception of logic (even if Frege did not on account of this subscribe to the thesis of the partial or total identity of logic and metaphysics). Logic was not, then, for Frege, merely “formal,” but had its own content, dealing with specific objects. Without this, there would be no possibility of “logicism” (p. 95).

Other relevant areas in which Fregean conceptions take up, or are inspired by, ideas present in the German logicians of the XIXth century, are:

3. Philosophy of language

Frege took up the tradition of philosophy of language which already existed in Germany and dated back to Herder (pp. 130ff.), the points of contact with Lotze’s and Liebmann’s ideas, which coincide in places, including in the terminology used, being of particular relevance (p. 137).

If Gabriel and Schlotter’s main line of interpretation consists of bringing out the centrality of the theses relative to philosophy of language, showing its dependence on epistemological questions, then this is manifested paradigmatically in two points:

4. Theory of knowledge

4.1 The concept of truth as value

5. Frege’s interest in metaphysics

Gabriel and Schlotter assert that Frege’s logicist project is fundamentally metaphysically motivated (pp. 167, 172). However, the term ‘metaphysical’ already has two meanings in Kant, namely, as a synonym for a priori knowledge of reason and as a synonym for a priori knowledge of transcendental objects. This gives Gabriel and Schlotter’s thesis two possible meanings, since the difficulties in grounding it in each one of them are clearly different. With respect to the first meaning, it is clear that, to the extent that Frege admits informative analytic knowledge or the possibility of a priori access to non-empirical objects, for him, mathematics arrives at a type of knowledge that Kant considered impossible in metaphysics (pp. 174-175. Cfe. Frege: GA, § 89). With respect to the second meaning, however, there is really nothing obvious about Gabriel and Schlotter’s thesis. Precisely for that reason, it is of interest to pay particular attention to their argumentation, which turns on demonstrating, on the one hand, that Frege explicitly placed his logicist program within the framework of opposing worldviews and, on the other hand, that he observed that deciding between them essentially had to go by way of treating the problem of infinity in mathematics, being radically at odds Cantor in the matter (p. 189. Cfe. Frege: NS, p. 272).

It is important to note that the 1915 text in question shows that the metaphysical needs, that initially tried to be satisfied by the logicist program of numbers as objects of reason, was now oriented in another direction, but remained. One of the basic motivations behind the grounding of arithmetic in geometry was in the fact that infinity could be recognized in the strict sense.

6. CONSIDERATION OF THE FINAL STAGE OF FREGE’S THOUGHT

Gabriel and Schlotter’s consideration of Frege’s interest in metaphysics is an example of their tendency to call attention to the existence in Frege’s thought of permanent convictions which survive the failure of his logicist program and later assume a new form. As a second element along these lines, it is worth mentioning Frege’s opposition to formalism and his conviction that numbers are objects, which is also at the basis of his project to ground arithmetic in geometry. The turn to geometry seeks, then, to secure the idea of numbers as objects no less that the thesis of infinity does.

Along the same lines, Gabriel and Schlotter’s observation points to the fact that in the final stage of Frege’s thought, his ties with neo-Kantianism grew stronger, his actual interaction with it being documentable, on the one hand, as well as a significant reception by neo-Kantians, on the other. Meriting special attention among such interactions is the relationship of Frege’s term and concept of “third realm” (drittes Reich) with its neo-Kantian context, with Simmel and Münch and Hirzel especially (p. 187), as well as the documented disagreement with Bauch as the background for Frege’s essay “Negation.”

B. CRITICAL DISCUSSION

In disagreement to what is usually the case among many Analytic philosophers, I recognize the value of Gabriel and Schlotter’s perspective and the relevance of their endeavor. I believe it necessary, however, to make some points with respect to what they have achieved in the hoping in the final analysis but to contribute to it.

Even though Gabriel and Schlotter have made a substantial contribution to reconstructing the context of Frege’s thought and his actual interactions (furthering investigation into the subject significantly beyond Hans Sluga’s work), this perspective is far from having been exhausted, for they not only leave out of consideration some authors expressly cited by Frege himself (such as, for ex., Grassman and Fischer), but by focusing one-sidedly on Frege’s relationship to the neo-Kantianism of Baden, they almost totally overlook Frege’s relationship with Brentano’s school (Stumpf, Marty, Kerry, Husserl) which, however, constitutes another basic element for reconstructing Frege’s philosophical horizon overall, since it is no less a matter of that other major school of the time.

The reference to a certain one-sidedness in the choice of the sources considered warns us about something else, namely that, although Gabriel and Schlotter have shown important and interesting areas of contact between Frege and neo-Kantianism, they do not take into consideration at the same time and with equal emphasis the differences between the two, something which, if actually done would certainly provide a more nuanced view. From this perspective, the following aspects seem to me to be relevant:

To conclude, let me say that, in spite of some possible improvements of the kind I have noted, Gabriel and Schlotter’s investigation unquestionably constitutes an indispensable frame of reference for the subjects it treats, and any subsequent study of them must take it into account and will only be of real value if argued on the basis of it.