Bolzano's Theoretical Philosophy: An Introduction (History of Analytic Philosophy)

The first book in English to offer a systematic survey of Bolzano's philosophical logic and theory of knowledge, it offers a reconstruction of Bolzano's views on a series of key issues: the analysis of meaning, generality, analyticity, logical consequence, mathematical demonstration and knowledge by virtue of meaning. There are few authors of the nineteenth century whose contribution to analytical philosophy was as substantial as Bolzano's. A meticulous and original critic of Kant's epistemology and an eminent predecessor to Frege and Husserl, his logical theories offered insightful and systematic analysis of key semantic notions. Bolzano's notions of logical consequence and analyticity anticipated with great acuity the views of Tarski and Quine. His account of a priori knowledge, which he developed in stark opposition to the Kantian doctrine of pure intuition, rests on an understanding of knowledge by virtue of meaning that shows a penetrating grasp of the nature of deductive knowledge. Bolzano's Theoretical Philosophy is the first book in English to offer a survey of Bolzano's philosophy of logic and theory of knowledge and is intended for anyone with an interest in the history of analytical philosophy Front Matter....Pages i-xi Introduction....Pages 1-10 Kant and German Philosophy....Pages 11-17 Decomposition....Pages 18-28 Meaning and Analysis....Pages 29-42 A Substitutional Theory....Pages 43-58 Analyticity....Pages 59-71 Ableitbarkeit and Abfolge ....Pages 72-90 Justification and Proof....Pages 91-101 A priori Knowledge....Pages 102-115 Things, Collections and Numbers....Pages 116-127 Frege, Meaning and Communication....Pages 128-138 Husserl, Logical Psychologism and the Theory of Knowledge....Pages 139-157 Back Matter....Pages 158-183