Frege on Truth, Beauty and Goodness
Scholars of Frege have spent a good deal of energy in discussing his views about truth, logic, and the relation between them. To one set of clues, however, scant attention has been paid. Repeatedly throughout his career, Frege attempted to illuminate the relation between logic and truth by comparing 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 beginning of Frege’s career, they were also coming to play a prominent role in neo-Kantian thought, particularly that of Wilhelm Windelband. It is plausible to conjecture that Frege was inspired to look 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. But whatever the sources of Frege’s use of the analogy, it is to his own 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 turn out that, although the language of the various comparisons is superficially similar, Frege actually makes four different 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 not be better said by a comparison of logic to, for example, physics. I draw two general conclusions from this. First, Frege was struggling over how to understand the relation of logic to truth. (Perhaps this is obvious anyway.) If he had not bee...
... middle of paper ...
...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. Stoothoff (New Haven: Yale University Press).
---------- (1979) Posthumous Writings, trans. P. Long 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) “Frege’s Conception of Logic”, in Future Pasts: The Analytic Tradition in Twentieth Century Philosophy, eds. J. Floyd and S. Shieh (Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Ricketts, Thomas. (1996) “Logic and Truth in Frege”, in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume, 70, 121-40.
The value attributed to the first virtue, wisdom, whose essence lay in “the perception of truth and with ingenuity,” concerns the comprehension of the nature of justice (7). In fact, Cicero asserts, within the public sphere, “unless learning is accompanied by the virtue that consists...
...objects and gods differ only in degree and not in kind''. From a Logical Point of View (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1953), p. 44.
The distinction in logic/understanding is a clean break between the Classical and the Romantic. Classical understanding is of underlying form while Romantic understanding is imaginative, creative, intuitive, and inspirational. The dichotomy of Classical and Romantic understanding is displayed by the differences between Pirsig’s fellow riders, John and Sylvia, and himself. John and Sylvia are artists, seeing the world through their Romantic lens, ignoring technology and finding its advances dangerous to their very survival. This is contrasted with Pirsig’s experience as a technical writer, understanding and being comfortable with technology, viewing the world (by default) through his Classical lens (though he analyzes the lenses themselves later, he is default Classical).
Furthermore, resonation can be found in Preziosi exploration of the establishment of female identification through aesthetics. Within Preziosi chapter on aesthetics he addresses main issues including “Kant’s Critique of Judgment, judgment about beauty, and perception of perfection.” Aesthetics was addressed in the perception of how the female body is formed and encased while a male looks at the female body. In this case the male would be Degas gazing at his ballerina while either sketching his model or doing a sculpture of the ballerina. Preziosi states that “there should be two kinds of theory or sciences of knowledge corresponding to each logic and aesthetics.” This concept of two kinds of theory made more apparent as every sculptor Degas made is presented as a different theory, yet the two theories are different, Degas’s artwork deals with both logic and aesthetics. Logic can be applied to Degas’s____, works of art. Where as aesthetics deals with____. Later on in Preziosi chapter on aesthetics, he brings up the issue of “the idea that sensory knowledge could have its own perfection-and, further, that an aesthetic judgment about beauty or beautiful objects.” When viewing Degas’s sculptor the
Kretzmann, N. et al (1989). The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy : From the Rediscovery of Aristotle to the Disintegration of Scholasticism, 1100-1600. Paperback: New York.
Spinoza, Benedictus De, Samuel Shirley, and Seymour Feldman. The Ethics ; Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect ; Selected Letters. Indianapolis: Hackett Pub., 1992. Print.
In the first part of his work, Nietzsche asserts that: “The pride connected with knowing and sensing lies like a blinding fog over the eyes and senses of men, thus deceiving them concerning the value of existence” (Nietzsche 451-452). Here, it seems that Nietzsche is trying to reject any empirical sense of gaining knowledge. For example, I know that I am sitting on a wooden chair because I can see the chair, feel the texture of the wood, touch it, and even smell the aroma of it. But Nietzsche argues that we only perceive the surface of things, and our “senses nowhere lead to the truth" (Nietzsche 452). This is what Nietzsche meant by using the analogy of our senses being like a “blinding fog over the eyes” and thus deceiving us on our knowledge about things. But how do we know what is true from what is false? What is truth as opposed to lies?
Wittgenstein, Ludwig; G. E. M. Anscombe, P.M.S. Hacker and Joachim Schulte (eds. and trans.). Philosophical Investigations. 4th edition, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. Print.
This essay hopes to define Spinoza’s reasoning behind his ‘Deus sive Natura’, arguing that God and Nature, or the universe, are but one substance. This separation is distinct to Spinoza’s substance monism, and argued through a geometric essay structure that allows reasoning to be accessible, as well as logical should the reasoning at each step have validity.
To some, truth is something that is absolute and unchanging. To others, truth is volatile and inconstant. In the 16th and 17th century, the foundations of civilization itself had been shaken. Many of the ideas which were thought to be absolutely true had been plunged into the depths of uncertainty. The cosmological, geographical, and religious revolutions called into question the nature of truth itself. It is no wonder, then, that some of the great writers at the time included within their works a treatise on the ways in which truth is constructed. Because of the major ideological revolutions that shaped their world, Milton, Montaigne, and Shakespeare all used characters and theatrical devices to create their own ideas on the construction of truth.
In Introduction to Aesthetics, G.W.F. Hegel’s opening paragraphs describe the spacious realm of the beautiful, the relationship of beauty in both nature and art, and the limitation and defense of aesthetics. Hegel addresses that the proper way to express the meaning of aesthetics is to refer to it as Philosophy of Fine Art, however, once adopting this expression humans, “exclude the beauty of nature” (Hegel). As humans, it has become a way of life to use our senses to help describe the beauty of nature, animals and other people in our world. According to Hegel, “beauty of art is higher than nature” (Hegel) and it is the art that is created by the spirit that stands above that of nature. Nature is an incomplete substance and the, “realms of nature have not been classified and examined from the point of view of beauty” (Hegel). Therefore, there is a difference between the beauty of nature and
3) The Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas. Whether God Exists? 1920. New Advent. http://www.newadvent.org/summa/100203.htm. K. Knight. 2003.
Immanuel Kant’s (1724-1804) Critique of Pure Reason is held universally as a watershed regarding epistemology and metaphysics. There have been anticipations regarding the notion of the analytic especially in Hume. The specific terms analytic and synthetic were first introduced by Kant at the beginning of his Critique of Pure Reason book. The mistake that metaphysicians made was viewing mathematical judgments as being “analytic”. Kant came up with a description for analytic judgments as one that is merely elucidatory, that is, what is implicit is transformed into explicit. Kant’s examples utilize the judgments of subjects or rather predicates, for instance the square has four sides. The predicates content is always already accounted for in
In his studies of debate and logic, Faustus insists that "Bene disserere est finis logices" (Scene 1, l. 7) or to be able to carry on a good debate is the completion of logic's purpose. Feeling that he has already attained this, Faustus discounts his knowledge of logic and debate. Although he seems to have g...