Gottlob Frege

nazism | national socialism

Martin Heidegger

meaning

ontology

sense

's philosophy, for all its emphasis on meaning, was not only systematic, but critical. For it retained a stringent concern with truth.

At the same time, Frege's philosophy, for all its emphasis on meaning, was not only systematic, but critical. For it retained a stringent concern with truth, where the laxity of Wittgenstein's eventual pragmatics—his notion that all language-games can find their warrant in culturally variable 'forms of life', as apprehended by Spengler—was inevitably to afford a franchise for intellectual relativism. Initially close to Wittgenstein's legacy, Dummett came through his prolonged work on Frege to a reaffirmation of the central importance of the assertoric dimension of language—the specificity and necessity of its claims to accurate report of the world—as against the performative functions so favoured by Austin, for whom there could be no critique of current usages. Wittgenstein's basic programme thus had to be rejected: 'philosophy cannot be content to leave everything as it is,' for 'linguistic practice is not immune to, and may well stand in need of, revision.'

Gottlob Frege, n.All

Gottlob Frege