What is the number one? Does 2 plus 2 always equal 4? These seemingly simple questions have perplexed philosophers for eons, but the ideas of German philosopher Gottlob Frege (1848-1925) transformed the discussion. Frege believed that the truths of arithmetic and of all mathematics are derived from self-evident logical truths. His new way of looking at logic and mathematics was influential and his convictions revolutionized logic and laid the foundation for modern analytic philosophy. Joan Weiner presents an accurate, accessible explanation of Frege's ideas, tracing the development of his thought and making the essential concepts understandable.

Frege is widely regarded as having set much of the agenda of contemporary analytic philosophy. As standardly read, he meant to introduce-and make crucial contributions to-the project of giving an account of the workings of (an improved version of) natural language. Yet, despite the great admiration most contemporary philosophers feel for Frege, it is widely believed that he committed a large number of serious, and inexplicable, blunders. For, if Frege really meant to be constructing a theory of the workings of (some version of) natural language, then a significant number of his stated views-including views that he claimed to be central to his philosophical picture-are straightforwardly wrong. But did Frege mean to be giving an account of the workings of language? He himself never actually claimed to be doing this, and, indeed, never even described such a project. Taking Frege at his Word offers an interpretation that is based on a different approach to his writings. Rather than using the contributions he is taken to have made to contemporary work in the philosophy of language to infer what his projects were, Joan Weiner gives priority to Frege's own accounts of what he means to be doing. She provides a very different view of Frege's project. One might suspect that, on such a reading, Frege's writings would have purely antiquarian interest, but this would be a mistake. The final two chapters show that Frege offers us new ways of addressing some of the philosophical problems that worry us today.

Not only can the influence of Gottlob Frege (1848-1925) be found in contemporary work in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, and the philosophy of language, but his projects-and the very terminology he employed in pursuing those projects-are still current in contemporary philosophy. This is undoubtedly why it seems so reasonable to assume that we can read Frege' s writings as if he were one of us, speaking to our philosophical concerns in our language. In Joan Weiner's view, however, Frege's words can be accurately interpreted only if we set that assumption aside. Weiner here offers a challenging new approach to the philosophy of this central figure in analytic philosophy. Weiner finds in Frege's corpus, from Begriffsschrift (1879) on, a unified project of remarkable ambition to which each of the writings in that corpus makes a distinct contribution-a project whose motivation she brings to life through a careful reading of his Foundations of Arithmetic. The Frege that Weiner brings into clear view is very different from the familiar figure. Far from having originated one of the standard positions on the nature of reference, Frege turns out not to have had positive doctrines on anything like what contemporary philosophers mean by "reference." Far from having served as a standard-bearer for those who take the realists' side of contemporary disputes with anti-realists, Frege turns out to have had no stake in either side of the controversy. Through Weiner's lens, Frege emerges as a thinker who has principled reasons for challenging the very assumptions and motivations that animate philosophers to dispute these doctrines. This lucidly written and accessible book will generate controversy among all readers with an interest in epistemology, philosophy of language, history of philosophy, and the philosophy of mathematics.