It must seem odd, to put the names of Frege and Nietzsche together. At first sight, the two appear to have little in common. The content and style of their thinking diverge in obvious ways; they come out of two different philosophical traditions; and their names are associated with two mutually hostile groupings in recent philosophy.
But the two men have nonetheless some important things in common. They were born just four years apart from each other. They also grew up in the same region of Germany and both grew up under the influence of German Lutheranism. What is more, they received a similar education. And they both endeavored to develop a new set of ideas that was so radical as to gain them only limited recognition during their lifetime.
These are, of course, in some sense only external characteristics that don’t bear on the content of their respective thought. But they point to the fact that the same environment produced such diverse ideas. We may ask then what it was about this environment that made this possible. Can we identify a deep structure in this environment that made the thought of both Frege and Nietzsche possible?
In order to understand the course of philosophy over the last 150 years, we cannot limit ourselves to studying the development of just one or the other of the philosophical schools that emerged in this period. We need a comprehensive view of the age that shows us how and why became such a fertile ground for new philosophical ideas. There emerged in this time a whole slew of philosophical movements which went on to flourish in the following century.
That wave of creative philosophical thought is now receding. Looking back at it, we can see clearly that Frege and Nietzsche belonged to the same historical moment and that they were motivated, despite all their differences, by certain common concerns. Not on their own, of course, but in the company of others they felt dissatisfied with the philosophical tradition and sought for a new beginning in philosophy. Among the shared characteristics of their thinking was a new interest in language and in the associated notions of meaning and truth. Both Frege and Nietzsche endeavored to deal with those topics and so have, of course, many other philosophers since then. But such observations do not yet reveal the total deep structure of this historical period. Its episteme, do used Foucault’s useful term, is still to be discovered,