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Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Frege on Sense and Reference
Gottlob Frege is considered the father of modern logic and one of the founding figures of analytic philosophy.aHisawritings are difficult and deal with technical, asbtract concepts. The Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Frege On Sense and Reference helps the student to get to grips with Frege's thought.
- GenresPhilosophy
304 pages, ebook
First published August 17, 2010
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November 27, 2012
The focus of this book is Frege's paper 'On Sense and Reference' but it delves more than enough to get an introductory idea of the philosophy of Frege in general. Perhaps the main thing that is missing is some of the more technical elements of Frege's philosophy of Logic and philosophy of Mathematics.
Of all the secondary texts I have read on Frege I think this has been my favourite, compared to Noonan Frege: A Critical Introduction and Kenny's Frege: An Introduction to the Founder of Modern Analytic Philosophy Textor benefits from having been able to have properly digested the neo-fregean literature, which he has benefited from but is not tied down to.
One of the nice things about this book when compared to Dummett's Frege: Philosophy of Language - which I am still trawling through - is that it is distinctly more Fregean: although Textor departs from Frege on many points he is careful to spend most of his time representing Frege's ideas clearly; with Dummett on the hand you get as much pages devoted to Dummett's views as you do to Frege's. I have found this book a really useful companion to Dummett's book. It's impressive to note that despite the sheer amount of writing Dummett has devoted to Frege, Textor has managed to fill this book with many observations that Dummett has overlooked.
This book is generally very clear, unsurprisingly the places in which the book is clearest are the areas in which Textor has also published papers – the section on Frege's view of Judgement is particularly illuminating. There are places where it is a bit hard to follow however which is a shame.
I would recommend reading the core primary texts before reading this, Foundations of Arithmetic and the papers 'On Sense and Reference' 'Function and Concept' and 'On Concept and Object' as well as the three later papers that make up Logical Investigations are all thoroughly readable thought provoking philosophy that require no real specialist or formal knowledge.
Of all the secondary texts I have read on Frege I think this has been my favourite, compared to Noonan Frege: A Critical Introduction and Kenny's Frege: An Introduction to the Founder of Modern Analytic Philosophy Textor benefits from having been able to have properly digested the neo-fregean literature, which he has benefited from but is not tied down to.
One of the nice things about this book when compared to Dummett's Frege: Philosophy of Language - which I am still trawling through - is that it is distinctly more Fregean: although Textor departs from Frege on many points he is careful to spend most of his time representing Frege's ideas clearly; with Dummett on the hand you get as much pages devoted to Dummett's views as you do to Frege's. I have found this book a really useful companion to Dummett's book. It's impressive to note that despite the sheer amount of writing Dummett has devoted to Frege, Textor has managed to fill this book with many observations that Dummett has overlooked.
This book is generally very clear, unsurprisingly the places in which the book is clearest are the areas in which Textor has also published papers – the section on Frege's view of Judgement is particularly illuminating. There are places where it is a bit hard to follow however which is a shame.
I would recommend reading the core primary texts before reading this, Foundations of Arithmetic and the papers 'On Sense and Reference' 'Function and Concept' and 'On Concept and Object' as well as the three later papers that make up Logical Investigations are all thoroughly readable thought provoking philosophy that require no real specialist or formal knowledge.
Displaying 1 of 1 review