|
|
frege’s letters to wittgenstein on the tractatus *
Introduction and Translation by
Richard Henry Schmitt
I. INTRODUCTION TO THE LETTERS
Those familiar with Bertrand Russell are aware of the intense relationship he had with Ludwig Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein was Russell’s student before the First World War, and the continuing importance of Russell to Wittgenstein is evident in correspondence between them about Wittgenstein’s Logische-philosophische Abhandlung, ultimately published as Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Perhaps less well known is that Wittgenstein also sought comments from Gottlob Frege, who had retired from his position at Jena by the time Wittgenstein completed his work. Here I provide bibliographical references to Wittgenstein’s published correspondence with both Russell and Frege. But my primary aim is to make English translations available of Frege’s letters criticizing the Tractatus. These translations were guided by my ongoing efforts to retranslate the Tractatus itself and to explain its form.
Wittgenstein had largely completed his Tractatus in August 1918, while on leave from the Austrian army. He had at least two typescripts, probably three, prepared before returning to active duty; indeed he used one of them to make an initial approach to a publisher. After November 1918 he was a prisoner of war in Italy, held starting in January 1919 at Cassino. In December, while a prisoner, he apparently directed one of his sisters (probably Hermine) to send a typescript to Gottlob Frege in Germany. Six months later, probably in early June 1919, once he had arranged a safe method with John Maynard Keynes and the authorities, he sent the typescript he had in his possession to Bertrand Russell. It reached Keynes in Cambridge by 28 June 1919, and Keynes forwarded it to Russell in London. Wittgenstein returned to Vienna on 25 August 1919, with the general release of the prisoners from Cassino.[1]
The letters to Wittgenstein from Russell and Frege concerning the Tractatus did not come to light until June 1988, when they were found in an old file in the storeroom of a real-estate broker in Vienna and recognized as significant just before they would have been shredded. The Brenner Archive Research Institute at the University of Innsbruck now holds these letters, along with many others discovered with them.[2]
~ * ~
Most of the letters Russell received, and now some of those he sent, have apparently been found and published. The letters from Wittgenstein that had been in Russell’s possession appeared in Ludwig Wittgenstein, Letters to Russell, Keynes and Moore (Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 1974). Those letters from Russell to Wittgenstein that were found in Vienna in 1988 were first printed in “Unpublished Correspondence between Russell and Wittgenstein,” edited by Brian McGuinness and G. H. von Wright, Russell, N.S. vol. 10, no. 2 (Winter 1990-91), pp. 101-24. They also appear – conveniently interleaved – in Ludwig Wittgenstein, Cambridge Letters: Correspondence with Russell, Keynes, Moore, Ramsey and Sraffa (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995). Russell’s first response to the Tractatus is dated 13 August 1919, and it includes an important list of queries. This is one of the letters that we did not have until the discovery in Vienna. Wittgenstein responded from Cassino on 19 August 1919, just a few days before his return to Vienna. Many commentaries on the Tractatus have quoted Wittgenstein’s letter, but we now also have the exact queries from Russell that Wittgenstein was answering.
Another part of the find in 1988 was the entire known correspondence from Frege to Wittgenstein, now held by the Brenner Archive. Transcriptions of the German originals were first published in Gottlob Frege, “Briefe an Ludwig Wittgenstein,” edited by Allan Janik, prepared and supplied with commentary by Christian Paul Berger, in Wittgenstein in Focus – Im Brennpunkt: Wittgenstein, edited by Brian McGuinness and Rudolf Haller, Grazer philosophische Studien, vol. 33/34 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1989), pp. 5-33. It is also to appear in a dual German-English version, with a translation by Burton Dreben and Juliet Floyd, in a forthcoming volume in memoriam to G. H. von Wright, edited by Enzo De Pellegrin, to be published by Kluwer. Some passages from the letters have already appeared in translation.[3] The independent translations that appear here (originally drafted in the early 1990s) were done with a focus on Frege’s reaction to the Tractatus, and so only the final four letters of the correspondence were translated.
Unfortunately we have to presume that the letters from Wittgenstein to Frege are gone, since fire resulting from Allied bombing in 1945 destroyed the Frege-Archiv at the University of Münster. All that survives is a descriptive list made by Heinrich Scholz and his coworkers at the Archive before the Second World War; it contains a record of the entire correspondence between Frege and Wittgenstein known to them.[4] The Scholz list indicates that, from this period, there were a number of postcards and one letter from Wittgenstein at Cassino, six communications from one of his sisters, and four letters from the autumn of 1919. The sister was presumably Hermine, the eldest – she had been entrusted with Wittgenstein’s manuscripts and typescripts during the First World War.[5]
In his search for Frege correspondence, Heinrich Scholz contacted Wittgenstein in April 1936 to see whether he had anything to contribute to the Frege-Archiv. It is not absolutely clear that Wittgenstein still held the correspondence later found in Vienna; he certainly could have politely denied that they were available to him. Yet Wittgenstein replied,
I do possess a few cards and letters from Frege. They are however of purely personal content, not philosophical. For a collection of Frege’s writing they have no value at all, though indeed for me [they have] sentimental value. The thought of offering them to a public collection is repugnant to me.[6]
It seems likely that the cards and letters now at the Brenner were the ones to which Wittgenstein refers, but it is hard to agree that they are purely personal. In fact he protested too much, suggesting that his reasons for refusing to contribute them were largely personal. Still, if he had agreed, these letters might also have been lost to us.
~ * ~
The first letter from Frege to Wittgenstein discussing the Tractatus is dated 28 June 1919. This would have been several months after Frege had initially received the typescript. We know from the Scholz list of correspondence that Wittgenstein’s sister told Frege in December 1918 (XLV/11)[7] that a copy of the Tractatus would be sent to him, and then that she had sent a missing page in March 1919 (XLV/13 and 14). Wittgenstein himself sent a card from Cassino dated 10 April 1919 (XLV/15) requesting a judgment about the work, and another on 9 June 1919 (XLV/16, contents not recorded). Frege apologizes for the delay in answering, saying that he had been burdened with “protracted business affairs.” In the endnotes to the correspondence, Berger points out that these may have been matters about Frege’s retirement: he was on leave in 1917 and became emeritus in 1918.[8] Frege also moved in the fall of 1918 to Bad Kleinen (Mecklenburg), where he lived at the time he wrote these letters. This letter seems to have been sent initially to Wittgenstein’s sister in Vienna, and then forwarded to Wittgenstein at Cassino; she reported to Frege that she had done so on 17 July 1919 (XLV/18). Apparently it did not reach Wittgenstein until early August 1919, since he reported to Russell on 19 August that Frege “wrote to me a week ago and I gather that he doesn’t understand a word of it all.”[9]
In Frege’s second letter, dated 16 September 1919, he mentions receiving a response to his first letter, sent from Cassino (presumably the letter dated 3 August 1919, XLV/19), and then a subsequent note from Wittgenstein in Vienna concerning his Tractatus (6 September 1919, XLV/21). Frege had been informed of Wittgenstein’s return to Vienna by his sister (28 August 1919, XLV/20). Frege refers to his own essay “Der Gedanke,” crossing out “mentioned earlier” and adding a footnote at the bottom of the page. Some postcards received at Cassino suggest that Frege had been planning to send a copy of his essay to Wittgenstein at the end of 1918, when it had been accepted for publication.[10] But it is not clear that Wittgenstein had a copy in hand until September 1919. Scholz records (XLV/22) that there was a letter from Wittgenstein also dated 16 September 1919 (though it would have crossed in the mails with Frege’s second letter) in which he thanks Frege for his essay “Der Gedanke.” In addition, Scholz notes that Wittgenstein makes critical observations about the essay, and requests help getting the Tractatus published in Beiträge zur Philosophie des deutschen Idealismus, where Frege had published “Der Gedanke.”[11]
Frege replies about the possibility of publication in his third letter, which is dated 30 September 1919. We know from the Scholz list that Frege did indeed write to both Bruno Bauch and Arthur Hoffman about Wittgenstein’s work, since letters in return from them mention it.[12] On 6 October, Wittgenstein wrote to Russell again that, “I am in correspondence with Frege. He understands not one word of my work and I am already completely worn out with nothing but explanations.”[13]
The final letter from Frege to Wittgenstein is dated 3 April 1920, and mentions a letter from Wittgenstein dated 19 March – neither seems to have been known to Scholz, since his Frege-Wittgenstein list ends with 1919. Berger points out that we can assume that Frege’s remark, “Naturally I do not take your frankness amiss,” refers to the critical observations that Wittgenstein made concerning “Der Gedanke.”[14] This seems to be the implication as well of Frege’s request that Wittgenstein should “go through my essay about thoughts” to find the first point of disagreement and then to write the grounds for his divergence. In addition, we know from P. T. Geach that Wittgenstein considered this
... an inferior work – it attacked idealism on its weak side, whereas a worthwhile criticism of idealism would attack it just where it was strongest. Wittgenstein told me he had made this point to Frege in correspondence: Frege could not understand – for him, idealism was the enemy he had long fought, and of course you attack your enemy on this weak side.[15]
~ * ~
My interest with the letters does not concern Frege’s comments on his own essay, despite their significance. Rather, I am concerned with two other matters: Frege’s criticism of the Tractatus, expressed in part as his difficulty understanding Wittgenstein’s means of expression; and secondly, what we can understand indirectly of Wittgenstein’s reactions to that criticism. This could, of course, be a more than adequate subject for a separate article. Here let me only make three suggestions about the contrast between their views:
1. From the start Frege questions whether the book meets the highest value, which for him is distinctness in expression ( Deutlichkeit). I believe that we should understand Wittgenstein’s purpose in different terms, where the goal is the recognition of tautologies and the gaining of a prospect over the bounds of logical expression ( Übersichtlichkeit). Related to this, it seems that Wittgenstein did indeed do what Frege asks about in the last letter, namely, write propositions in which “is” produces neither equations of definition nor judgments of recognition, but some third possibility (namely, logical propositions that can be recognized as tautologies).
2. Frege says in the second letter that Wittgenstein’s preface implies that the reader gains from its form rather than its content, making it an artistic rather than a scientific achievement. I suggest that we can understand how Wittgenstein might indeed be communicating via form, though in a way that for him is logico-philosophical, instead of purely artistic. [16] If so, Wittgenstein’s definiteness might be shown by an unambiguous order to his series of propositions, that is, as stated in the general form of the truth-function itself given at Tractatus proposition 6.
3. In the final letter, Frege at first questions Wittgenstein on his concern about the “deep grounds of idealism,” but then realizes that he was referring to a legitimate need that is falsely satisfied by idealism. We need to consider their respective positions on idealism. I believe we can associate Wittgenstein’s implied position with the one expressed by Heinrich Hertz, namely that we cannot remove a doubt that makes an impression on the mind by calling it metaphysical – instead we must show what the legitimate sources might be for our need to resort to metaphysical explanation. [17]
II. THE LETTERS
The primary source for this translation is the original German publication of the text, edited by Allan Janik and prepared by Christian Paul Berger. Only the last four letters of the Frege correspondence to Wittgenstein, numbered eighteen through twenty-one there, are translated here. In their original form, each letter is on one piece of paper, in most cases graph paper, folded to produce a booklet of four pages.
Footnotes have been added, though Frege himself inserted a footnote to the bottom of his third page of letter 19, as noted below. In some cases as noted, I have translated information provided by Berger for the first publication of the letters. Interpolations made in the text for sake of readability in English, or to insert a particular sense otherwise lost in the translation, are marked by brackets, [thus]. Errors in the original letters, marked sic in the printed text, have been corrected and noted. German-style quotation marks, printed as greater- or less-than signs and as greater- or less-than-or-equal signs, have been replaced by single quotation marks.
It should be noted that I have used conventions I developed for my own translation of the Tractatus, which differ from existing published translations. For example, I translate “ Sachverhalt” as a technical term, “object-state”, rather than using either “atomic fact” or “state of affairs”. (I do use “state of affairs” in the translation of “ bei unseren trostlosen wirtschaftlichen Zuständen” in the last letter – “in our dismal scientific state of affairs”.) For “ bestehen” and the noun “ Bestehen”, I use “to obtain” as an intransitive verb and “obtaining”, now somewhat archaic in English, but still understandable, meaning “to hold good, subsist”, as in “Laws of nature that universally obtain” – this is the only word in English I have found that has the same coverage and implications as the German. These decisions arise from my translation of proposition 2 of the Tractatus, as “What is the case, the fact, is the obtaining of object-states.” In light of the connection between Russell and Wittgenstein, I translate the word “ Satz” as “proposition” as they would have understood it, even though Frege might have meant something closer to “sentence” when he used the word.
NSIT Administrative Systems
The University of Chicago
rschmitt@uchicago.edu
The following table shows some of the special terms that appear in Frege’s letters along with my translations of them.
|
|
| Abhandlung
| =
| Tractatus (indicating the work)
|
|
| =
| treatise (otherwise)
|
| Bedeutung
| =
| reference
|
| bedeutungsvoll
| =
| meaningful (in reference)
|
| bestehen
| =
| to obtain
|
| Bestehen
| =
| obtaining
|
| deutlich
| =
| distinct
|
| nicht so deutlich
| =
| not so distinctly clear
|
| Deutlichkeit
| =
| distinctness (in expression)
|
| Erkenntnis
| =
| realization
|
| erkenntnistheoretisch
| =
| epistemological
|
| Sachlage
| =
| object-arrangement
|
| Sachverhalt
| =
| object-state
|
| Salz
| =
| proposition
|
| Sinn
| =
| sense
|
| Vorsellung
| =
| idea
|
|
|
[18. Letter]
Bad Kleinen in Mecklenburg, 28 June 1919
Dear friend,
You have surely waited long enough for an answer from me and have wanted a response from me concerning your Tractatus, which you had sent to me. Therefore I feel strongly that I bear a responsibility to you and hope for your forbearance. I have been greatly burdened recently with protracted business affairs, which have taken much time away from me because I am inept at the settlement of such matters through lack of practice. In this way I have been prevented from taking up your Tractatus in more detail and accordingly can unfortunately supply no substantiated judgments concerning it. I find it difficult to understand. You put your propositions side-by-side mostly without substantiating them, or at least without substantiating them fully enough. So I often do not know whether I should agree, since their sense is not distinct enough to me. Out of a detailed substantiation the sense would also arise more clearly. The linguistic usage of life is in general too shaky to be used unmodified for more difficult logical and epistemological purposes. It seems to me that elucidations are necessary in order to reveal the sense more precisely. You use quite a few words right in the beginning that obviously depend greatly upon their sense.
Right at the beginning I encounter the expressions “to be the case” and “fact” and I suppose that to be the case and to be a fact are the same. The world is all that is the case, and the world is the totality of facts. Is not every fact the case, and is not what is the case a fact? Is [it] not the same when I say, [Let] A be a fact, as when I say, [Let] A be the case? Why this double expression? Admittedly every equilateral triangle is an equiangular triangle, and every equiangular triangle is an equilateral triangle, and yet the sense of the first expression is not coincident with that of the second.
It is a theorem that every equilateral triangle is an equiangular one. But here the expressions “equilateral triangle” and “equiangular[18] triangle” are composed, and from the different compositions there arise different senses. But in our case we do not have this. Can one say, out of the composition of the expression “to be the case” there arises a sense? Is it a theorem that what is the case is a fact? I think not; but I would also not like to let it pass for an axiom, for [there] does not seem to me to be any realization in that. But now comes yet a third expression: “What is the case, the fact, is the obtaining of object-states”. I understand this in this way: that every fact is the obtaining of an object-state, so that another fact is the obtaining of another object-state. Could one now not strike the words “the obtaining of” and say: “Every fact is an object-state, every other fact is another object-state”?[19] Could one perhaps also say: “Every object-state is the obtaining of a fact”? You see, I become entangled in doubt right in the beginning concerning what you want to say, and thus just do not progress. I now often feel tired, and this hinders my understanding as well. You will not, I hope, blame me for these remarks, but rather look upon them as stimulus to make the manner of expression in your Tractatus easier to understand. Where so much depends on the exact comprehension of sense, one must not expect so much of the reader. On its own the use of different expressions in the same sense seems to me to be a taboo; where one does it because of a particular advantage, one should not leave the reader in doubt about it. But, where the reader, contrary to the intention of the writer, could come to connect the same sense with different expressions, the writer should point out the difference and seek to make as distinct as possible where it obtains. Are there also object-states that do not obtain? Is every combination of objects an object-state? Does it not also depend upon the means by which this combination is produced? What is that which does the combining? Can this perhaps be like gravitation with regard to the planetary system? Is this an object-state? You write: “It is essential for the thing that it can be a component of an object-state.”
Can now a thing be also a component of a fact? The part of the part is part of the whole. If a thing is component of a fact and every fact is part of the world, then the thing is also part of the world. For a better understanding I wish examples in order to see, as I trust I would, what corresponds in language to the fact, the object-state, the object-arrangement, what is indicated in language by a fact, an object-state that obtains and possibly an object-state that does not obtain, and what is indicated by the obtaining of an object-state and thus the fact to which the object-state corresponds, whether by that there arises an essential distinction between an object-state [and] the fact [to which the object-state corresponds].[20] I wish to have an example because Vesuvius is component of an object-state. Then it would seem also that the components of Vesuvius must be components of this fact; the fact would thus also consist of solidified lava. This would not seem correct to me.
Yet I really do want to do you a friendly service with these lines, and now I fear you have been annoyed with pointed questions. Forgive them and keep our friendship,
Yours, thinking of you often,
G. Frege
[19. Letter]
Bad Kleinen, 16 Sept. 1919
Dear Mr. Wittgenstein,
I had not replied to your last letter from Cassino, when I received another note from you. Many thanks for both. I congratulate you on your fortunate return from prison camp. May you soon put behind you the consequences of what you had to endure. That you want to take up a profession seems good to me, and I earnestly wish for you that the hopes you have will be fulfilled. I hold the view that for us still to come to an understanding in the philosophical area is not so trivial as it seems to you. I retain the hope that you will in the future argue for that which I believe I have realized in the field of logic. First, though, you must surely be convinced by it. Therefore I desire the exchange of views with you. And, in long conversations with you, I have recognized a man who has sought the truth as much as I have, to some extent in other ways. But precisely this allows me to hope to find with you something that can complete, perhaps even correct,[21] that which has been found by me. So I expect, as I attempt to teach you to see through my eyes, myself to learn to see through your eyes. I do not give up the hope of an understanding with you so easily.
Permit me then not to go into the contents of your last letter yet. The previous one from Cassino had already set so much going in me that, if I would give way to every stimuli, a book would develop rather than a letter.
What you write concerning the goal of your book is alien to me. Indeed it can only be achieved if others have already had the thoughts expressed within it. The pleasure from reading your book can thus no longer be aroused by the content, which is already known, but rather only by the form, in which perhaps the individuality of the author is revealed. Therefore the book becomes more an artistic than a scientific achievement; what is said in it recedes behind how it is said. In my remarks I start from the assumption that you want to communicate a new content. And then, of course, the greatest distinctness [in expression] would be the greatest beauty.
I wonder, Am I one of those who will understand your book? Without your assistance, hardly. By myself I would have never thought of what you wrote to me about object-states, facts, object-arrangements, although I come pretty close to your view in one place in my essay.[22] I am all the more glad to find a proposition in your letter, in which your manner of speaking seems to agree completely with my own. It is the proposition: “The sense of both those propositions is one and the same, but not the ideas that I attached to them as I wrote them.” Here I concur entirely with you, in your leaving open the possibility of distinguishing the proposition from its sense, in two propositions having the same sense and yet still differing in [the] ideas to which they are attached. In the essay named below I have dealt with it on p. 63.[23] You underscore the word “I”. In that I also see a sign of agreement. The specific sense of the proposition is the same for everyone; the ideas, however, that each attaches to the proposition belong to him alone; he is their bearer.[24] No one can have the ideas of another.
You write then: “What corresponds to the elementary proposition when it is true is the obtaining of an object-state.” With this you do not explain the expression “object-state”, but rather the entire expression “the obtaining of an object-state”. In a definition the explained expression must always be regarded as an inseparable whole. The parts, which one can distinguish in it grammatically, are not as such taken to have an individual sense. You also use the word “obtaining” in another connection. Accordingly you seem to have divided the expression “the obtaining of an object-state” into two parts, and your proposition, “What corresponds to the elementary proposition if it is true is the obtaining of an object-state,” seems not to be an explanation of the expression “the obtaining of an object-state.” I attempt to take your explanation like this: “An elementary proposition can be recast without change of sense in a proposition of the form ‘A obtains’.”[25] In this, the sense of the word “obtains” is taken as known. Now, if that elementary proposition is true, then A is an object-state. Accordingly one can say: “If a proposition ‘A obtains’ is a true elementary proposition, then A is an object-state”; then this proposition does not first need to be recast, since it already has the required form.
But now I must wait first for what you say to that.
Until then, may you depend upon friendship, yours devotedly,
G. Frege
[20. Letter]
Bad Kleinen i. Mecklenb., 30 Sept. 1919
Dear Mr. Wittgenstein,
I have been letting your request to be of assistance in publishing your Tractatus in the Beiträge z. Ph. d. D. I.[26] turn over in my mind. Of the gentlemen [involved], I personally know only Prof. Bauch at Jena.[27] Concerning the acceptance of a contribution, it seems to me that Mr. Hoffmann in Erfurt mostly decides alone.[28] In this, however, the recommendation of Prof. Bauch would, I believe, be a decisive influence. Should I appeal to him? I could write to him that I have gotten to know you as a thinker to be taken with complete seriousness. Concerning the Tractatus itself I can make no judgment, not because I have not agreed with its content, but rather because the content is not clear enough to me. Perhaps we will find, after we have once come to an understanding about word usage, that we never differed much from one another. I could ask Prof. Bauch whether he wishes to see the manuscript. But I scarcely believe that this will succeed. If I have not miscalculated, your manuscript would fill about 50 pages of the Beiträge, thus would perhaps just fit in an issue of the Beiträge. It seems to me hopeless that the publisher would give over an entire issue to one single author, an unknown one at that. If publication in a journal were to be considered, it would be necessary to permit a division of the Tractatus. You write in your preface that the truth of the thoughts communicated seems unassailable and definitive. Now could not one of these thoughts, in which the solution of a philosophical problem is contained, be taken as the object of a treatise, and thus the whole be divided into so many parts, to be handled as philosophical problems? It is also good not to alarm the reader with the length of the treatise. If the first treatise, which should contain the fundamental [truth], found favor, it would also be easier to place the remaining treatises in the journal. In this way an inconvenience could perhaps still be avoided.
After one has read your preface, one does not really know what one is to do with your first proposition. One expects to see the posing of a question, a problem, and then one reads something that makes the impression of making assertions that are given without substantiation, yet where they appear urgently needed. How do you come to these assertions? With which problems are they connected? At the top I would like to see a question posed, a riddle whose solution I could enjoy getting to know. One must have courage from the start to deal with the consequences.
Yet these are basically questions that only you yourself can answer. To me it lacks a proper introduction, in which a goal is set.
Yet do not take these remarks of mine amiss; they are made with good intentions.
Rather keep your friendship [for me],
Yours, G. Frege
[21. Letter]
Bad Kleinen (Mecklenb.), 3 April 1920
Dear Mr. Wittgenstein,
Many thanks for your letter of 19 March! Naturally I do not take your frankness amiss. But I would like to know which deep grounds of idealism you believe that I have not grasped. I thought I understood that you did not yourself consider epistemological idealism to be true. Accordingly I believe you realize that there are no deeper grounds for this idealism at all. Its grounds could then only be apparent grounds, not logical [ones]. One is indeed sometimes led astray by language, because language does not always suffice for logical claims. Indeed concerning the formation of language, besides the logical capabilities of humans, there is very much psychological that is important. Logical errors do not stem from logic, but rather come from the impurities or disturbances to which the logical activity of mankind is exposed. My intention was not to investigate [the] psycho-linguistic origin of all such disturbances. Please just go through my essay about thoughts as far as the first proposition with which you do not agree, and write me this proposition and the grounds of your divergence. Thus I would better recognize what you have in mind. Perhaps I have never fought against idealism in the sense that you believe it should be fought against. I have hardly ever used the expression “idealism” at all. Take my propositions entirely as they stand, without attributing to me an intention that would perhaps be foreign to me.
Now, as far as your own writing is concerning, I take exception immediately at the first proposition. Not that I consider it false, but rather because its sense is unclear to me. “The world is all that is the case.” The “is” is used either as the simple copula, or as the equality sign, in the fuller sense of “is the same as”. Since the “is” of the subordinate clause is obviously just the copula, I can understand the “is” of the main clause only as an equality sign. Up to here, I believe, no doubt is possible. But should the equation be understood as a definition? This is not so distinctly [clear]. Do you want to say, “I will understand by ‘world’ all that is the case”? Then “the world” is the explained expression, “all that is the case” the explaining [expression]. In this case nothing would be asserted by it about the world or about that which is the case; rather, if something were being asserted, then it is something about the language usage of the writer. Whether or how far this possibly agrees with the language usage of life is a matter upon which little depends, for the philosopher, especially, once he has established his language usage.[29]
Nevertheless, in an equation a thought can be expressed that essentially widens our realization if it is acknowledged to be true. Every recognition is a realization of this type. A planet is, for example, recognized as that which was already observed earlier. At first then we have two names: the name that the planet received earlier and secondly the name that I have now ascribed to it, even if only in the form “the planet just now observed by me”. The astronomer now forms, at first experimentally, possibly in the form of a question, the equation “Is Eros the planet just now observed by me?” This question has a sense for the astronomer.[30] He is convinced: it must be either affirmed or denied. The name “Eros” has a sense for him and likewise the expression “the planet just now observed by me”.[31] And each of these names already had these senses before the equation was formed. None of these names receives its sense first by virtue of this equation, as in the case of the definition. Also that each of these names would be meaningful [in reference] is already certain to the astronomer before he forms the question. In this case neither of the names is given a reference first by means of the question or by means of the judgment in which it is affirmed, as happens by means of an equation of definition. Then the astronomer – I will just assume – affirms the question. In so doing he settles nothing about his language usage as in the case of the definition; but he does gain a new recognition by this means, which is essentially more valuable than a mere deduction from the law of general identity a = a. If one has given the sign ‘2’ a reference of ‘1 + 1’ by means of an equation of definition 2 = 1 + 1, which I take as known, then it is now sure [that] 2 = 1 + 1; but no new realization is actually gained by means of the acknowledgement of this equation, rather we have in it only a particular case of the law of identity.
Now if you do not think of the proposition “The world is all that is the case” as an equation of definition, but rather want to make known by it a valuable realization, each of the two names “the world” and “all that is the case” must already have a sense before the formation of the proposition, thus a sense that is not first bestowed on it by virtue of this equation. Before I can write anything further about this matter, I must get clear on this. Equation of definition or judgment of recognition? Or is there yet a third [possibility]?
From what I have experienced, though, it is nearly impossible to publish a difficult work in our dismal scientific state of affairs, if one does not bear a considerable part of the cost.
Just now I gather further from one of your earlier letters that you acknowledge in idealism a deep, true nucleus, an important feeling, which is falsely satisfied, yet nevertheless is a legitimate need. What sort is this need?
It would please me if, by means of your replies to my questions, you make the understanding of the results of your thoughts easier.
With warm greeting in old friendship,
Yours, G. Frege
NOTES
[*] I must acknowledge the Brenner Archive Research Institute at the University of Innsbruck, where the letters translated here are held. Allan Janik and Christian Paul Berger did the initial editorial work on them, transcribing and footnoting, and I benefited greatly from their efforts. Allan Janik generously provided me with photocopies of the originals, which proved useful both to resolve fine points and to provide some sense of their original appearance and layout. I also want to thank Juliet Floyd who generously shared her translation in process, begun with Burton Dreben, as well as her thoughts and encouragement. I have also benefited from her careful review of the manuscripts, and made some adjustments to my text and notes accordingly. And finally I owe John Ongley thanks for his help in tracking down bibliographic materials unavailable to me.
[1] The source for most of this information is G. H. von Wright, “The Origin of the Tractatus,” in his Wittgenstein (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, [1982?]), pp. 61-109. Also see Brian McGuinness, Wittgenstein: A Life, Young Ludwig 1889-1921 (Berkeley CA: University of California Press, 1988), pp. 264-277.
[2] Reinhard Merkel, “Briefe an Ludwig Wittgenstein,” Die Zeit (Overseas Edition), 5 May 1989, pp. 6-9.
[3] See especially Juliet Floyd, “The Uncaptive Eye: Solipsism in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus” in Loneliness, ed. Leroy S. Rouner (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1998), pp. 79-108. Valuable commentary on the Frege criticism of the Tractatus is also found there. The translations are extracts from an earlier version of the forthcoming one. Also see Erich H. Reck, “Wittgenstein’s ‘Great Debt’ to Frege” in From Frege to Wittgenstein, ed. Erich H. Reck (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 3-38. Much shorter passages have also appeared in the biographies of Wittgenstein by Ray Monk and by Brian McGuinness.
[4] These notes are cited, whenever letters themselves are not available, in Gottlob Frege, Wissenschaftlicher Briefwechsel, ed. Gottfried Gabriel et al., Nachgelassene Schriften und wissenschaftlicher Briefwechsel, vol. 2 (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1976), pp. 264-68.
[5] We know this from a manuscript list in Hermine’s hand dated January 1917, also part of the find in Vienna in 1988. See Brian McGuinness, “Wittgenstein’s Pre-Tractatus Manuscripts,” in Wittgenstein in Focus – Im Brennpunkt: Wittgenstein, ed. Brian McGuinness and Rudolf Haller, Grazer philosophische Studien, vol. 33/34 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1989), pp. 35-47.
[6] Albert Veraart, “Geschichte des wissenschaftliche Nachlasses Gottlob Frege und seiner Edition,” in Studien zu Frege, ed. Matthias Schirn, vol. 1, Problemata 42 (Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog, 1976), p. 106, my translation.
[7] Numbers in the form XLV/n are references to the Scholz list; see Frege, Wissenschaftlicher Briefwechsel, pp. 266-68.
[8] Frege, “Briefe an Wittgenstein,” pp. 32, note on letter 18.
[9] Wittgenstein, Cambridge Letters, p. 124, letter 68.
[10] Frege, “Briefe an Wittgenstein,” pp. 17-18, 31. Frege mentions his plan to send the essay in two postcards from October 1918, items 16 and 17; but he may not have had printed copies until the second half of 1919.
[11] Also see the discussion in von Wright, “The Origin of the Tractatus,” p. 80.
[12] Frege, Wissenschaftlicher Briefwechsel, pp. 8-9, 81. See the notes about letters from Bauch dated 31 October 1919 (III/4) and Hoffman dated 23 January 1920 (XVI/3).
[13] Wittgenstein, Cambridge Letters, letter 72, p. 131, my translation.
[14] Frege, “Briefe an Wittgenstein,” p. 33, first note on letter 21.
[15] P. T. Geach, “Preface,” in Gottlob Frege, Logical Investigations (New Haven CT, Yale University Press, 1977), p. vii.
[16] Burton Dreben used the word “dialectical” to describe Wittgenstein’s mode of expression in the Tractatus; see Matthew B. Ostrow, Wittgenstein’s “Tractatus”: A Dialectical Interpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). I agree with the point of this, but prefer “skeptical” (used in the classical sense) and “ironic” in part because of the association of dialectical methods with idealism.
[17] Heinrich Hertz, The Principles of Mechanics Presented in a New Form, trans. D. E. Jones and J. T. Walley (London: Macmillan, 1900; reprint, New York: Dover, 1956), pp. 23. Frege echoes the wording in Hertz’s German as he writes about Wittgenstein’s view, making me think that Wittgenstein himself was paraphrasing Hertz. For the German text, see Heinrich Hertz, Die Prinzipien der Mechanik in neuem Zusammenhange dargestellt, Gesammelte Werke, ed. Ph. Lenard, vol. 3 (Leipzig: Johann Ambrosius Barth, 1894), p. 28.
[18] Here the original letter says “equilateral” again, rather than “equiangular.”
[19] A question mark is added at this point.
[20] The final phase was printed as “zwischen einem Sachverhalte . . . [sic] der Tatsache.” Taking account of German word order, ellipsis would seem to stand for “to which the object-state corresponds,” reflecting the previous clause. Juliet Floyd points out that we could also simply eliminate the ellipsis from the English.
[21] Juliet Floyd notes that it is hard to decide whether Frege has written “noch” or “auch” here; reading “auch” would give us “perhaps also correct.”
[22] Frege adds a footnote at the bottom of his page: “Der Gedanke, eine logische Untersuchungen, in den Beiträgen zur Philosophie des Deutschen Idealismus, I.Bd. S.58” (pp. 58-77). He has crossed out “mentioned earlier” (vorhin erwähnten) modifying the word “essay”. For the German text of that essay, see Gottlob Frege, Logical Untersuchungen, ed. Günter Patzig (Göttingen: Vanderhoeck & Ruprecht, 1966), pp. 30-53. For an English translation of it, see Gottlob Frege, Logical Investigations, ed. P. T. Geach, trans. P. T. Geach and R. H. Stoothoff (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977), pp. 1-30.
[23] Corresponds to pp. 8-9 in the English translation, published as Logical Investigations.
[24] “Träger” – Geach translates this as “owner” in Logical Investigations, pp. 14-15.
[25] The final double quotation marks, missing the original, are added at this point.
[26] That is, Beiträge zur Philosophie des deutschen Idealismus. The word ‘Beiträge’ appears in the original with its dative plural case ending: Beiträgen; throughout I have used the nominative form.
[27] Christian Paul Berger notes the following: Bruno Bauch (1877-1942), representative of the southwest German school of Neo-Kantianism, student of Heinrich Rickert, with whom he took his degree in 1902. In 1911 he was called to the University of Jena as the successor to Otto Liebmann, remaining there until his death. He was coeditor of various philosophical journals, including Kant-Studien, and chairman of the Deutsche philosophische Gesellschaft in the thirties. His book on Kant, which he published in 1917 in Leipzig, is well known.
[28] Berger notes the following: Arthur Hoffmann (1889-1964), founder of the Deutsche philosophische Gesellschaft, professor at the pedagogical academy in Erfurt. A. Hoffmann was for a while editor of the Beiträge zur Philosophie des deutschen Idealismus.
[29] The final clause was printed as: “auf der aber [sic] für die Philosophen wenig ankommt, nachdem er seinen Sprachgebrauch einmal festgestellt hat.”
[30] Frege changed “Dieser Fragesatz” (“this interrogative proposition”) to “Diese Frage”.
[31] The asteroid Eros was in the news in 2000-01 when the NEAR-Shoemaker spacecraft orbited and then landed on it, the first such event. Berger notes the following: “Eros” refers to an asteroid, which was discovered in 1898 by [Gustav] Witt. It had the discovery number 433, and was in Frege’s time popular for a while, since its unusual orbit offered the possibility of measuring the distance between Sun and Earth, which was accomplished in the year 1909.
© 2003 Richard Henry Schmitt.
|
|