Abstract. This is a critical reexamination of several pieces in van Heijenoort's Selected Essays that are directly or indirectly concerned with the philosophy of logic or the relation of logic to natural language. Among the topics discussed are absolutism and relativism in logic, mass terms, the idea of a rational dictionary, and sense and identity of sense in Frege.
Mathematics Subject Classification. 03-03, 03A05.Keywords. Jean van Heijenoort, philosophy of logic, history of logic.