Frege on Truth, Beauty and Goodness Essay -- Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob

Frege on Truth, Beauty and GoodnessScholars of Frege ache spent a good deal of energy in discussing his views about justness, logic, and the singing between them. To one set of clues, however, scant attention has been paid. Repeatedly throughout his career, Frege attempt to illuminate the relation between logic and truth by equivalence it to the relations between ethics and the good and aesthetics and the beautiful. Truth, beauty and goodness, of course, have had a long history in platonic philosophy. By the starting line of Freges career, they were also coming to play a prominent berth in neo-Kantian thought, particularly that of Wilhelm Windelband. It is plausible to conjecture that Frege was inspired to forecast at ethics and aesthetics to understand the link between logic and truth by their connection in the work of Windelband or other neo-Kantians, though I know of no direct evidence that he was. plainly whatever the sources of Freges use of the analogy, it is to his o wn writing that we must look for its meaning. In the following, I shall look at the comparisons in detail in order to see exactly what Frege intended in likening the relation of logic to truth to that of ethics to the good and aesthetics to the beautiful. It will tour of duty out that, although the language of the various comparisons is superficially similar, Frege actually makes four contrastive points by means of the analogy. Furthermore, only one of these comparisons says something that both a) is about logic and truth and b) could non be better said by a comparison of logic to, for example, physics. I draw two general conclusions from this. First, Frege was try over how to understand the relation of logic to truth. (Perhaps this is obvious anyway.) If he had not bee... ...c and Thought.Frege, Gottlob. (1967) The Basic Laws of Arithmetic, trans. M. Furth (Berkeley University of California Press).---------- (1977) Logical Investigations, trans. P. Geach and R. Stoothof f (New Haven Yale University Press).---------- (1979) Posthumous Writings, trans. P. ache and R. White (Oxford Blackwell).Gabriel, Gottfried. (1984) Fregean Connection Bedeutung, Value and Truth-Value, Philosophical Quarterly, 34, 372-6.-------------- (1986) Frege als Neukantianer, Kant-Studien, 77, 84-101.Goldfarb, Warren. (2001) Freges introduction of Logic, in Future Pasts The Analytic Tradition in ordinal Century Philosophy, eds. J. Floyd and S. Shieh (Oxford Oxford University Press).Ricketts, Thomas. (1996) Logic and Truth in Frege, in Proceedings of the peripatetic Society, Supplementary Volume, 70, 121-40.