Sense and Essence: Frege and Husserl

Abstract

In this essay, i attempt to clarify husserl's concept of an "essence" by comparing it with gottlob frege's seemingly very different concepts of "sense" and "the thought." although frege's concepts come out of an analysis of language and husserl's concepts are insisted to be "pre-linguistic" structures of phenomena, there are marked similarities between them and they are designed to solve the same puzzles regarding the nature of necessary truth.