ABSTRACT
In certain respects his fate was similar to that of two other philosopher-mathematicians, Cantor and Dedekind. At about the same time, in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, all three of them set out to provide deeper foundations for the theory of natural and real numbers. All three were motivated by an opposition to the prevailing philosophical climate, all three hoped to change it through their foundational investigations. And all three discovered the strength of the opposition to them. Frege’s fate will concern us further. Cantor’s was to be driven mad by the relentless attacks of his enemy Kronecker with his robust mathematical naturalism; Dedekind’s to be buried alive in an insignificant post at the Technical College at Braunschweig.
