Frege: Philosophy of Language

Introduction

Dummett worked on this study of nearly 700 pages for more than a decade before it appeared in 1973. It reconstructs Frege’s philosophy of language from his scattered writings – sense and reference, the context principle, the distinction between object and concept, the theory of assertion – and develops Dummett’s own views on meaning through this reconstruction. Dummett presents Frege as the thinker who made the theory of meaning, rather than the theory of knowledge, the foundation of philosophy, and so as the founder of analytic philosophy. The book revived Frege studies in English-speaking philosophy; its historical picture was challenged by Hans Sluga and others, who placed Frege in the context of German neo-Kantianism.

Connections

Builds on

• The Foundations of Arithmetic1884 · Gottlob Frege
• On Sense and Reference1892 · Gottlob Frege

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