This volume tackles Gödel's two-stage project of first using Husserl's transcendental
phenomenology to reconstruct and develop Leibniz' monadology and then founding classical
mathematics on the metaphysics thus obtained. The author analyses the historical and systematic
aspects of that project and then evaluates it with an emphasis on the second stage.The book
is organised around Gödel's use of Leibniz Husserl and Brouwer. Far from considering past
philosophers irrelevant to actual systematic concerns Gödel embraced the use of historical
authors to frame his own philosophical perspective. The philosophies of Leibniz and Husserl
define his project while Brouwer's intuitionism is its principal foil: the close affinities
between phenomenology and intuitionism set the bar for Gödel's attempt to go far beyond
intuitionism.The four central essays are `Monads and sets' `On the philosophical development
of Kurt Gödel' `Gödel and intuitionism' and `Construction and constitution in mathematics'.
The first analyses and criticises Gödel's attempt to justify by an argument from analogy with
the monadology the reflection principle in set theory. It also provides further support for
Gödel's idea that the monadology needs to be reconstructed phenomenologically by showing that
the unsupplemented monadology is not able to found mathematics directly. The second studies
Gödel's reading of Husserl its relation to Leibniz' monadology and its influence on his
published writings. The third discusses how on various occasions Brouwer's intuitionism
actually inspired Gödel's work in particular the Dialectica Interpretation. The fourth
addresses the question whether classical mathematics admits of the phenomenological foundation
that Gödel envisaged and concludes that it does not.The remaining essays provide further
context. The essays collected here were written and published over the last decade. Notes have
been added to record further thoughts changes of mind connections between the essays and
updates of references.
