This is the first single-volume edition and translation of Frege's philosophical writings to include all of his seminal papers as well as substantial selections from all three of his major works. It is intended to provide the essential primary texts for students of logic, philosophical logic, philosophy of language, and philosophy of mathematics. It contains in particular Frege's four papers "Function and Concept", "On Concept and Object", "On Sense and Reference", and "Thought", and new translations of key parts of the Begriffsschrift, The Foundations of Arithmetic, and the Basic Laws of Arithmetic. The editor's substantial introduction provides the reader with an overview of the significance and development of Frege's philosophy, while the footnotes, appendices and glossary facilitate understanding of some of the more difficult elements of Frege's thought.
- "But what of the analysis of a proposition such as 'All humans are mortal'? Traditional logic had treated this too as of subject-predicate form, but as Frege recognized, 'All humans' does not have the same semantic role as the proper name 'Caesar'."
- "Although the significance of his notation for generality only dawned on Frege gradually, it is this that we now recognize as Frege's greatest single logical achievement."
- "But the criticism did, however, have one positive effect: it made Frege aware of the need to explain his ideas and sketch his proposed derivation of arithmetic from logic informally, before embarking on the programme of providing rigorous proofs using his 'concept-script'. He read up on the work of "