Frege’s Linguistic Turn: It’s Nature and Influences

The role and importance of natural language in philosophy is clearly significant and obvious. Aristotle for systematizing his logic and formalizing its rules was significantly dependent on ordinary language such that he formulated the rules of his logic in the framework of this language. By criticizing Aristotle’s logic on the basis of incompetence and limitations of natural language, Frege developed a new philosophical system by introducing a formal language and a new system of logic. Of course these modifications did not end with Frege and continued in later philosophical systems. In this paper, firstly, we consider natural language and it’s influence on Aristotle’s logic and the problems of its application in ancient logic. Then some of Frege’s innovations in formal language and logic will be discussed. After that, we will examine Frege’s linguistic turn, its turning point, nature and conditions. Finally the effects of formal language in establishing the structure of Frege’s philosophical system will be considered.