Abstract

This paper takes its start from the unpublished Leibnizian manuscript of which a critical edition and an Italian translation are presented by the Author in the same issue of “Discipline filosofiche‘ -- in particular from some passages concerning what we might roughly call teleological projections. A parallel analysis of Leibniz’s and Husserl’s attitudes to the attribution of teleological properties, at various levels of complexity, factuality, ideality, to the natural world and to human history, shows in Husserl’s teleology a mix of ingredients very similar to those of Leibniz’s own one -- ingredients that Husserl always relished -- but with quite different results. On the one hand, for Husserl the universal order is teleologically realised in humanity, albeit with a reference to transcendence that has never been made by him completely clear. On the other hand, perhaps thanks to being unaware of Kant’s future contributions to the field, Leibniz seems more capable to avoid certain naïver forms of teleological attribution to which Husserl might seem more prone