A Primer on Ernst Abbe for Frege Readers

Abstract

Setting out to understand Frege, the scholar confronts a roadblock at the outset: We just have little to go on. Much of the unpublished work and correspondence is lost, probably forever. Even the most basic task of imagining Frege's intellectual life is a challenge. The people he studied with and those he spent daily time with are little known to historians of philosophy and logic. To be sure, this makes it hard to answer broad questions like: ‘Who influenced Frege?’ But the information vacuum also creates local problems of textual interpretation. Say we encounter a sentence that may be read as alluding to a scientific dispute. Should it be read that way? To answer, we'd need to address prior questions. Is it reasonable to think Frege would be familiar with the issue? Deep or superficial familiarity? Would he expect his readers to catch the allusion? Can he be expected to anticipate certain objections? Can people he knows be expected to press those objections? A battery of such questions arise, demanding a richer understanding of Frege's environment.