Two Moments in the Philosophical Life of Kurt Gödel Juliette

We examine two sets of Gödel’s writings, from the very beginning of his philosophical life, and from the end of it, to wit: some remarks from the introduction to his 1929 thesis, written when Gödel was 22 years of age; we will also take up some remarks Gödel made about the Euthyphro, one of the so-called “Socratic” dialogues of Plato, in the course of a discussion with the proof theorist Sue Toledo in 1975, who took notes of that conversation. The intention in choosing these particular moments from Gödel’s philosophical life is to construct something of a philosophical portrait of Gödel, rather than draw any particular connections between them – though the connections are undoubtedly there, and are undoubtedly strong ones. The author thanks the NWO foundation for their support during the writing of this paper; Steve Awodey, Paolo Mancosu, Dana Scott and Wilfried Sieg for helpful comments and correspondence about the material in Gödel’s thesis, and Rose Cherubin and Palle Yourgrau for helpful discussions and advice concerning the Euthyphro. The author is especially grateful to Jouko Väänänen, for extensive discussions about first and higher order logic.