Husserl’s Phenomenology of the Monad: Remarks on Husserl’s Confrontation with Leibniz

This chapter argues that the differences between Husserl’s account of intersubjectivity and Leibniz’s monadology are serious enough to defeat any attempt to construct a phenomenological monadology. Monadological thinking cannot solve the phenomenological problem of intersubjectivity, and phenomenological thinking cannot yield a properly metaphysical monadology, for there can be no phenomenological grounding for the idea of a monad determined by a complete concept. From the phenomenological perspective, a subject’s experience of the world is always limited and incomplete. The chapter argues, furthermore, that Husserl’s attempt at a monadology reveals the weakness in the phenomenological account of intersubjectivity, for by starting with a subject’s limited experience, phenomenology cannot account for the communalization that is presupposed in the recognition that an individual’s experience is limited.