HEGEL'S LOGIC AND FREGE'S STAR PARADOX?

In 1892 Frege published an essay "Uber Sinn und Bedeutung" where he presented a paradox, the so-called star paradox. The paradox and Frege's own solution it became later very famous and influential. This paradox of how to relate logical and contingent identities is perhaps the major characteristic problem of Analytic philosophy, and Frege's solution has been celebrated as a brilliant opening of a whole new era of philosophy. Because Analytic philosophy, its British branch in particular, has been regarded as an anti-Hegelian movement par exellence it is not only interesting, but fair, to ask how a Hegelian would have reacted to this problem. We must, however, be prepared to acknowledge that the reaction may not look like a solution to the original problem. Yet the reaction may illuminate some of the presuppositions and commitments that guided Frege's thinking, and thus tell us something of the nature of the original problem too. A Hegelian reaction may be both a way to keep distance from Frege's original difficulties and a solution to another problem, a Hegelian variant of Frege's problem.