Joan Weiner. Frege Explained: From Arithmetic to Analytic Philosophy. Chicago: Open Court, 2004. Pp. xvi + 179. ISBN 0-8126-9460-0 [Book Review]

This book is an expanded version of Joan Weiner's introduction to Frege's work in the Oxford University Press ‘Past Masters’ series published in 1999. The earlier book had chapters on Frege's life and character, his basic project, his new logic, his definitions of the numbers, his 1891 essay ‘Function and concept’, his 1892 essays ‘On Sinn and Bedeutung’ and ‘On concept and object’, the Grundgesetze der Arithmetik and the havoc wreaked by Russell's paradox, and a final brief chapter on Frege's influence. To this, Weiner has added two further chapters on Frege's dispute with Hilbert on the foundations of geometry and on the three late essays of his ‘Logical investigations’. There is little change to the content of the earlier chapters, but they have been divided into sections, each with its own heading, which makes it easier to find one's way around.With the two additional chapters, the book provides an excellent introduction to Frege's work from his earliest Begriffsschrift, which gives the first presentation of his new logic, to his three late essays, which expound his views on logic, truth, and thought. As in the earlier version, the focus is on the logicist project that dominated Frege's career: the attempt to demonstrate that arithmetic is reducible to logic. In all her writings on Frege, Weiner has been particularly sensitive to the philosophical …