Reading Frege's Grundgesetze

Gottlob Frege''s Grundgesetze der Arithmetik or Basic Laws of Arithmetic was intended to be his magnum opus the book in which he would finally establish his logicist philosophy of arithmetic. But because of the disaster of Russell''s Paradox which undermined Frege''s proofs the more mathematical parts of the book have rarely been read. Richard G. Heck Jr. aims to change that and establish it as a neglected masterpiece that must be placed at the center of Frege''s philosophy.Part I of Reading Frege''s Grundgesetze develops an interpretation of the philosophy of logic that informs Grundgesetze paying especially close attention to the difficult sections of Frege''s book in which he discusses his notorious ''Basic Law V'' and attempts to secure its status as a law of logic. Part II examines the mathematical basis of Frege''s logicism explaining and exploring Frege''s formal arguments. Heck argues that Frege himself knew that his proofs could be reconstructed so as to avoid Russell''s Paradox and presents Frege''s arguments in a way that makes them available to a wide audience. He shows by example that careful attention to the structure of Frege''s arguments to what he proved to how he proved it and even to what he tried to prove but could not has much to teach us about Frege''s philosophy.