Abstract

The correspondence between Paul Bernays and Kurt Gödel is one of the most extensive in the two volumes of Gödel’s collected works devoted to his letters of (primarily) scientific, philosophical and historical interest. It ranges from 1930 to 1975 and deals with a rich body of logical and philosophical issues, including the incompleteness theorems, finitism, constructivity, set theory, the philosophy of mathematics, and post-Kantian philosophy, and contains Gödel’s thoughts on many topics that are not expressed elsewhere. In addition, it testifies to their life-long warm personal relationship. I have given a detailed synopsis of the Bernays Gödel correspondence, with explanatory background, in my introductory note to it in Vol. IV of Gödel’s Collected Works, pp. 41-79. 1 My purpose here is to focus on only one group of interrelated topics from these exchanges, namely the light that it⎯together with assorted published and unpublished articles and lectures by Gödel⎯throws on his perennial preoccupations with the limits of finitism, its relations to constructivity, and the significance of his incompleteness theorems for Hilbert’s program. 2 In that connection, this piece has an important subtext, namely the shadow of Hilbert that loomed over Gödel from the beginning to the end of his career. 1 The five volumes of Gödel’s Collected Works (1986-2003) are referred to below, respectively, as CW I,

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