On Frege’s Legacy in the Later Wittgenstein and Brandom

  • Kurt Wischin Universidad de Granada, Spain
Keywords: Augustinian Picture, Representing, Inferentialism, Singular Terms, P.M.S. Hacker

Abstract

It is generally accepted that Frege is a powerful logician who created completely original tools for analysis which have become the firm ground on which 20th Century logic and analytical philosophy is built, however indirect his influence might be. His specific attempts to construct the foundations of arithmetic, however, are frequently judged to be ill–conceived and no more nowadays than a curiosity of 19th Century philosophy. In the light of scepticism that there is anything left to share after Wittgenstein's criticism of Frege both in the Tractatus and in Philosophical Investigations, as expressed in particular by P.M.S. Hacker, it is the aim of this paper, first, to show that there is a strand of philosophical thinking that runs from Kant to Frege to Wittgenstein which is worth exploring and developing: Robert B. Brandom's enterprise of rational pragmatism and inferential semantics is one outstanding example for developing original philosophical thought based on the conviction that Frege's inheritance is very much alive and worthwhile exploring, along with Kant's, Hegel's and Wittgenstein's, among others. The aim of this paper is, secondly, to explore the seemingly divergent routs some aspects of Frege's legacy take when reworked by Wittgenstein and Brandom, and further if and how, respectively, these divergences might be seen, after all, as nothing more than local ramifications of one continuous stream of philosophy.

Author Biography

Kurt Wischin, Universidad de Granada, Spain

Kurt Wischin is currently CPhil at the International School for Graduate Studies of the University of Granada. His first formational contact with academic philosophy occurred in Vienna during the 1970s. He obtained a BA in Philosophy at the Autonomous University and a MPhil at the Autonomous National University of Mexico. His work in philosophy takes as it starting point the philosophy of Wittgenstein, in particular as condensed in Philosophical Investigations. His current investigative activities are focussed on the foundational years of contemporary philosophy of logic and language, putting special emphasis on the development of Frege's doctrine and its influence on the formation of the Tractatus, as well as generally early analytical philosophy. He has published various articles and translations y some anthologies' and academic reviews.

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Published
2019-06-30
How to Cite
[1]
Wischin, K. 2019. On Frege’s Legacy in the Later Wittgenstein and Brandom. Disputatio. 8, 9 (Jun. 2019), 375-407. DOI:https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3479784.

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