ABSTRACT
Draft
Federico Boccaccini
University of Brasilia
Unity of consciousness and other minds:
the concept of monad from Brentano to Husserl
in I. Apostolescu (Ed), Husserl and Leibniz: Metaphysics, Monadology
and Phenomenology, Dordrecht, Springer, exp. date 2021
Leibnitian monadology in Husserlian phenomenology is an issue that affects consciousness and intersubjectivity.
By the beginning of the 20th century, Leibniz’s metaphysics was a matter of central importance in European intellectual life (Couturat, Russell, Cassirer). However, Husserl does not
seem interested in monads as a basic elements of reality but rather in their non-metaphysical use. In this sense, over the years Husserl develops a phenomenology of the monadic
ego where monads have “windows” (Hua XV, 609). Husserl claims that transcendental subjectivity exists in consort with others.
In this paper, I shall investigate the historical context and the origin of Husserlian concept
of monad as an effect of the main reception of Lebniz's monadology in the 19th century
German philosophy. Although, from around 1907/08, Husserl already uses the concept of
monad, the very first development of this Leibnitian notion is discussed extensively in subsequent years (Hua XIII-XV; Crisis, supplement VIII; Cartesian Meditation). This rediscovery of Leibniz's monadology in Husserl is not, therefore, an original theme; what is original
about this topic is how Husserl recasts this concept to fit his phenomenology of transcendental ego.
My aim is to suggest that one can find a very first root of this Husserlian interpretation of
monadology in the discussion that Brentano develops in the fourth chapter of the second
book of his Psychology from an empirical standpoint, where he argues for the unity of consciousness but against the idea of monad as a simple entity. If for Leibniz the monad is a
simple substance without parts, for Brentano consciousness is a unity rich in parts and relations (unity without simplicity).
I divide my paper in three parts: after a presentation of the reception of Leibnitian monadology in the German historical context (Herbart, Bolzano, Lotze), I analyze the model of
Brentanian anti-monadic consciousness and, finally, in the last part, compare this conception with the use of monad in Husserl’s latest works.