Monad and World

A seemingly obvious way of explaining what Husserl means by “monad” is with an internalist or Cartesian conception of consciousness. That approach would dovetail with the absolute idealist interpretation of Husserl. Although internalism is exegetically plausible of the early Husserl from the Logical Investigations period, it is implausible of the Husserl after his transcendental turn. Nevertheless, despite his renunciation of internalism, Husserl’s monadology does cohere with at least three Leibnizian theses: (1) world immanence, (2) causal isolation, and (3) intersubjective harmony. In this paper, I show how the anti-internalist Husserl of the transcendental period supports the monadological theses in a way opposed to absolute idealism.