ABSTRACT
The existence of striking similarities between the philosophies of Bruno and Leibniz has long been noticed. Indeed, it was one of Leibniz’s own acquaintances who first accused him of having ‘drawn his whole system’ from one of Bruno’s books.1 Many commentators since have agreed that Leibniz was at least partially indebted for his monadology to Bruno’s system.2 They have mostly assumed, however, that this debt was incurred in the 1690s, when Leibniz began to use the word ‘monad’ rather than ‘substance’ as the name for the fundamental entities of his metaphysical system. I argue here that this assumption is wrong and that the search for the origins of Leibniz’s monadology and of the extent of Bruno’s influence on it needs to be redirected to the young Leibniz of 20 or even 30 years earlier.
