In Search of the Actual Historical Frege

Abstract

IN SEARCH OF THE ACTUAL HISTORICAL FREGE Hans Sluga has recently proposed reading Frege from an historical standpoint . He and several other Frege commentators have insisted that Frege's concept of sense is a cognitive and not a linguistic concept. With both these suggestions, I am in general agreement. I will however comment on both and indicate how they are to be understood and within what limits. 1. Sluga rightly emphasizes the need for reading a philosopher from an historical perspective and in doing so provides a much-needed counterbalance for the a-historical and logical analytical approach to the writings of philosophers that one-sidedly predominates today. Because of this latter sort of approach, some philosophers have failed, according to Sluga, "to come to grips with the actual, historical Frege."' This failure has inevitably resulted in a certain unfortunate na'ivet6 on the part of analytical philosophy, if Sluga is right. Since analytic philosophy traces its lineage back to Frege as it perceives him and since this perception is misguided in so far as the actual historical Frege is concerned, analytic philosophy arises out of a na'ivet6 regarding its own historical origins. Contrast this with Michael Dummett's views as to how one should read a philosopher. I am quoting from Dummett simply because Dummett is, at this point, responding to Sluga. "In interpreting a philosopher," Dummett writes, "there can be no substitute for thinking through, rigorously and in detail, what his arguments are and how they are supposed to work, what hidden assumptions must hold good if they are to be cogent, what answers could be given to objections, what relation one thesis has to another, in short, for subjecting his work to logical analysis. ''" ' HansSluga,Gottlob Frege (London: Routlege& KeganPaul, 1981), 3. MichaelDumlnett, The Interpretation of Frege's Philosophy (London:Duckworth,1981), 528. [237] 238 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY Are these--Dummett's and Sluga's--opposed points of view? I want to emphasize that they are not. That they are rather mutually complementary perspectives may be shown by the following two considerations. In the first place, Dummett's program of subjecting a philosopher's texts to logical analysis can be carried out only when we have been able to identify the various theses the philosopher holds. One obvious and indispensable way of doing the latter is by careful immanent textual exegesis. This by itself, one may contend, does not fully disambiguate the appropriate sentences and/or terms by eliminating all likely interpretations save the one we want to assign to them. It is here that a historical perspective comes in handy. If we can determine which authors our philosopher read, whom he took more seriously than others he knew, or who most "influenced" him we can better carry out immanent textual exegesis, and are more likely to be able to arrive at a definitive interpretation of the crucial terms, sentences, and arguments. You cannot fully understand, e.g., Kant's first two arguments on space in the Transcendental Aesthetic unless you determine whom he is arguing against. Dummett's program requires, in short, that we already ascribe to a philosopher a set of theses ct, 13,and 7. Once we have succeeded in doing so, we can ask what relation one thesis has to another, we can explore their hidden assumptions and test the cogency and consistency of the arguments. But whence the certainty that the theses are precisely those, namely, ct, 13,and y, and not ct', 13',and y'? Both textual exegesis and historical reading can be beautifully combined to help us here. In the second place, every philosopher is explicitly concerned with questions and problems which themselves can be asked only within a larger philosophical horizon. That horizon itself is not thematized within the philosopher 's texts, but rather remains the unthematic but encircling background which first renders the concerns and questionings of the text possible . For the interpreter of the text, it is essential--if he is to grasp those concerns and questionings in their genuine import--that that horizon be rescued from its anonymity. It is here that understanding the historical milieu within which an author thought is of...