ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on Edmund Husserl's notion of transcendental reflection as an act of consciousness which plays a central role within his phenomenological project. It considers the relation between reflection and retention, after having clarified Husserl's notion of retention through its comparison and contrast with recollection in his analysis of internal time-consciousness. After discussing how reflection is situated among the acts of consciousness especially in reference to their quality, it presents the way Husserl wants to employ transcendental reflection within his phenomenological method. The chapter presents how reflection is situated in Husserl's analysis of time-consciousness and about the eidetic structure of consciousness in reference to its temporality. In the philosophy of reflection, Merleau-Ponty does not want to undermine the Husserlian project by accusing him of not recognizing the secondary nature of reflection whose performance is dependent on the primary constitution of the past by retention. The two terms 'introspection' and 'retrospection' has been introduced.
