Editing Gottlob Frege (section)

== 1924 diary ==
Frege's original papers having been destroyed in the [[World War II|Second World War]], in 1954 [[Michael Dummett|Dummett]] studied what transcriptions had survived of his ''[[Nachlass]],'' including fragments of a 1924 diary.<ref name=":1">{{Cite web |last=Monk |first=Ray |author-link=Ray Monk |date=October 2017 |title=Gottlob Frege: The machine in the ghost |url=https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/philosophy/44997/gottlob-frege-the-machine-in-the-ghost |access-date=2025-05-01 |website=[[Prospect Magazine]] |language=en}}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Klement |first=Kevin C. |date=Fall 2014 |title=The Russell–Dummett Correspondence on Frege and his Nachlaß |url=https://people.umass.edu/~klement/brmd.pdf |journal=The Bertrand Russell Society Bulletin |issue=150 |pages=25–29}}</ref> Dummett, an anti-racism activist as well as a Frege scholar, later recounted how he had been deeply shocked to discover from this that the man he had "revered" as "an absolutely rational man" was, at the end of his life, a 'virulent [[Anti-Semitic|anti-Semite]]' of "extreme right-wing opinions".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Dummett |first=Michael A. E. |url=https://archive.org/details/fregephilosophyo0000dumm/mode/1up |title=Frege; philosophy of language |date=1973 |publisher=New York, Harper & Row |others= |isbn=978-0-06-011132-8 |edition= |pages=xii |chapter=Preface |orig-year= |url-access=registration}}</ref><ref>Hersh, Reuben, ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=VQN6DwAAQBAJ&q=Frege What Is Mathematics, Really?]'' (Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 241.</ref>

The diary fragments were finally published in 1994.<ref>Gottfried Gabriel, Wolfgang Kienzler (editors): "Gottlob Freges politisches Tagebuch". In: ''Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie'', vol. 42, 1994, pp. 1057–98. Introduction by the editors on pp. 1057–66. </ref> with an English translation following in 1996.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Mendelsohn |first=Richard L. |date=December 1996 |title=Diary: Written by professor Dr Gottlob Frege in the time from 10 March to 9 April 1924: Edited and with commentary by Gottfried Gabriel and Wolfgang Kienzler |url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00201749608602425 |journal=Inquiry |language=en |volume=39 |issue=3-4 |pages=303–342 |doi=10.1080/00201749608602425 |issn=0020-174X}}</ref> Written in the last year of his life, at the age of 76, it contains opposition to the parliamentary system, universal suffrage, democrats, socialism and liberals, and hostility toward Catholics and the French as well as the Jews.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Dummett |first=Michael A. E. |url=https://archive.org/details/fregephilosophyo0000dumm/page/n15/mode/1up |title=Frege; philosophy of language |date=1973 |publisher=New York, Harper & Row |isbn=978-0-06-011132-8 |page=xii |url-access=registration |via=[[Internet Archive]]}}</ref> Frege thought Jews ought at least be deprived of certain political rights.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Frege, Gottlob {{!}} Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy |url=https://iep.utm.edu/frege/ |access-date=2025-05-02 |language=en-US}}</ref> And, although he had held friendly relations with Jews in real life (among his students was [[Gershom Scholem]] who greatly valued his teaching), Frege wrote that it would be best if Jews would "get lost, or better would like to disappear from Germany."<ref name="Sherratt2013" /> 

Frege confided "that he had once thought of himself as a liberal and was an admirer of [[Otto von Bismarck|Bismarck]]", but then sympathized with General [[Erich Ludendorff|Ludendorff]]. In an entry dated 5 May 1924 Frege expressed some agreement with an article published in [[Houston Stewart Chamberlain|Houston Stewart Chamberlain's]] ''Deutschlands Erneuerung'' which praised [[Adolf Hitler]].<ref name="Sherratt2013">{{cite book | author = Yvonne Sherratt | date = 21 May 2013 | title = Hitler's Philosophers | publisher = Yale University Press | pages = 60 | isbn = 978-0-300-15193-0 | oclc = 1017997313 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=zvsbrUEr1pwC&pg=PA60}}</ref> Some interpretations have been written about that time.<ref>[[Hans Sluga]]: ''Heidegger's Crisis: Philosophy and Politics in Nazi Germany'', pp. 99ff. Sluga's source was an article by Eckart Menzler-Trott: "Ich wünsch die Wahrheit und nichts als die Wahrheit: Das politische Testament des deutschen Mathematikers und Logikers Gottlob Frege". In: ''[[FORVM|Forvm]]'', vol. 36, no. 432, 20 December 1989, pp. 68–79. http://forvm.contextxxi.org/-no-432-.html</ref>