Abstract

The dissertation deals with the historical and philosophical relationship between Leibniz and Husserl. The historical focus concerns Husserl's own interpretation and understanding of Leibniz as inferred from his logical writings, as well as his appropriation of the Leibnizian locutions, "monad" and "monadology." The philosophical concern deals with the relationship between epistemology and phenomenology. ;In the first portion of the paper, I address the problems of Leibniz's conceptualism. Towards remedying some of the well-known problems with his conceptual metaphysics, I refer to his largely neglected writings in epistemology and the philosophy of mind. I contend Leibniz does provide a theory of non-conceptual content to compensate for some of the pitfalls of his conceptualism. ;In the second portion of the paper, I argue for the claim that Husserl's own works in philosophical logic and epistemology may be characterized as Leibnizian. I provide historical documentation in support of my view that Husserl enjoyed, in fact, a fairly sophisticated familiarity with Leibniz's metaphysics, which he relied upon in the development of what he calls "formal ontology." I then provide an explanation of the development of phenomenology as the discipline concerned primarily with taking care of the sort of non-conceptual content indicated by the limits of Leibniz's metaphysics. In this light, I go on to provide an explanation of Husserl's own "phenomenological monadology."