Diary: Written by professor Dr Gottlob Frege in the ... - AAAARG.ORG

316 Gottlob Frege
26 March 1924
It is understandable that it is considered essential to improve the economic
condition of our poor fellow countrymen, especially of employees. Less
evident is the demand that one strive to improve the economic condition of
the poor employee at the expense of the employer. It cannot succeed this
way, because every burden turned over to the employers, because they are
employers, in time must revert back to the employees. These efforts I regard
as an insanity. 15 Already before the World War, very many - perhaps all the
well-known statesmen aside from Bismarck - suffered from this illness. One
could think that since these efforts could have no success, they would be
harmless. That, however, is not the case; for they spread a foul atmosphere in
which Social Democracy can thrive richly until, having reached a position of
power, it collapses of its own accord.
27 March 1924
In cases where employer and employee could not come to an agreement on the
conditions for concluding a contract, the tendency was, even before the World
War, to exert pressure on the employers through the fear that otherwise the
employees could take to violence and the unrest thus originated would only
give the authorities reason for dissatisfaction. Nothing could be more mistaken
than this! It is the obligation of the governing authority to remain strictly
impartial as long as none of the parties takes up violence; once this happens,
however, it must act strongly against the violent people.
30 March 1924
The two devils and the theologian. The devils are mentioned first because they
are intelligent. To be sure, the theologian has also learned a thing or two. But just
as one is never finished with a science, so too the theologian. Even the fattest
lecture notebook is not without holes and precisely in these holes . .. Who
knows whether the devils haven't got the upper hand! Now, indeed, we shall see
it. Don't devils seize their victims exactly where they least expect it? And where
does a theologian believe he is least able to be seized? In his Christianity.
First, I should introduce the devils. Here on the right stands the devil of
pride, and here on the left the devil of envy. It is part of their cunning that
15 Frege considers the view that the condition of the workers is to be improved at the cost of
the employers an insanity, because he perceives in it the hopeless attempt to do something that
is in contradiction with itself. Cf. Grundgesetze der Arithmetik (Forward to vol. I, p. xvi),
where Frege diagnoses a 'hitherto unknown form of madness' in the case of beings 'whose
laws of thought directly contradict ours'. On this issue, Frege follows the opinion of Bismarck
as stated in the public minutes of a meeting of the State Ministry on 8 December 1884: '[I]n
and for itself he held the growth of Social Democracy not especially threatening. Due to
the obvious unfeasibility of its goals, it seemed to be less dangerous than the Progressive
party . . .' (cited in Bismarck und die preußisch-deutsche Politik 1871-1890, ed. M.
Stürmer [München, 1970], p. 207).