Frege's Father was a German Idealist

Abstract

Usually, a sharp break in the history of philosophy is assumed, separating continental or post-Kantian philosophy from analytic philosophy and the new logic from the old. In research, this division is typically dated to the year 1879, when Gottlob Frege's Begriffsschrift was published. In recent decades, however, research has repeatedly sought out Frege's predecessors and speculated on the path by which the mathematician Frege acquired his philosophical knowledge. The following paper presents a new source: Gottlob Frege's father Alexander studied with a philosopher from the broad circle of German idealism and tried in several writings to apply and continue his philosophy himself. This new source not only elucidates Gottlob Frege's familiarity with post-Kantian philosophy, but also has the potential to explain logical influences, such as that of Leibniz.