Regarding the Name of the Award

This award is named after the eminent philosopher and logician Gottlob Frege (1848–1925). In light of his antisemitic statements in his posthumously published diaries, the GAP engaged in intensive discussion in 2024 and 2025 about whether this name should be retained.

The impetus

Members of the GAP asked the Executive Committee to reconsider the namesake of the Frege Award in light of his antisemitic statements in his posthumously published diaries.

The GAP Executive Committee and the entire GAP Board considered it their responsibility to address this important yet sensitive matter and to weigh the arguments for and against a possible renaming of the “Frege Award” in a rational discourse. This process is documented here; further down you will find links to the key documents and the most important information.

Initial workshop

As a first step, the two GAP Presidents, Elke Brendel and Markus Schrenk, held a workshop in Bonn on August 2, 2024, in which philosophers as well as colleagues from antisemitism research debated whether renaming the award is necessary or sensible or, as others believe, an overreaction. Recordings of the talks can be found here on our YouTube channel.

Member survey (February 26 – March 31, 2025)

In a first round, we surveyed our members about a possible renaming of the Frege Award. We provided all members with the voting results, comments, and all name suggestions we received, anonymized and in confidence. A summary of these arguments and a selection of name suggestions can be found here.

Member vote (April 30 – May 30, 2025)

After carefully weighing all arguments, GAP members voted in an online ballot to retain the name of the award. The statistics for this vote are available here.

The GAP’s self-conception

The GAP sees itself as a community that not only promotes analytic philosophizing, but also takes social responsibility seriously. The antisemitic, nationalist, and anti-democratic statements in Frege’s diary entries stand in clear contradiction to the GAP’s values.

Retaining the name “Frege Award” can therefore be justified only insofar as there is no direct connection between these problematic views of Frege and his philosophical work—a body of work that has had a decisive influence on the development of analytic philosophy in Germany and worldwide. Frege’s significant and influential philosophical contributions should continue to be taught and researched. At the same time, his antisemitic attitude, as clearly expressed in the diary entries, must not be glossed over. This documentation makes the GAP’s engagement with the “Frege Award” transparent. For transparency, as well as a lively, ongoing discussion, is more important to the philosophical community than the outcome of any single survey or vote.

In this spirit, we invite you to share with us any new findings that may emerge about Frege. If you do not find an important argument in our summary, please let us know as well.

Brief information on Frege’s political diary (1924)

Shortly before his death, in diary-like notes from March 10 to May 9, 1924, Gottlob Frege expressed, among other things, his monarchist, anti-democratic, and German-nationalist convictions. These diary entries also contain antisemitic passages as well as approving statements about the political views of Erich Ludendorff, one of the main proponents of the conspiracy-theoretical “stab-in-the-back” myth, who in Frege’s time was a leading member of the far-right “Deutschvölkische Freiheitspartei” and took part in the 1923 “Beer Hall Putsch.” These notes, later referred to as a “political diary,” became known to a wider audience at the latest following their publication in 1994 in the Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie (Berlin 42 (1994) 6, 1057–1066).