ABSTRACT
"Self-reflection" names the overarching project and central aim of philosophy in the modern period. Such reflective self-consciousness is still the aim of Husserl's phenomenology in its striving to establish a presuppositionless philosophy by means of rigorous, scientific, critical self-reflection focusing purely on what is given to consciousness. Modern philosophy construed experience as founded on the immanence of the subject and its own self-reflection. The existential depth of being, which is beyond the purely rational grasp of the subject and can only be believed, must also be reflected in the act of consciousness if consciousness is to be complete, since this completeness requires it to be connected with its own hidden grounds. There have been numerous attempts to recuperate in purely secular terms self-reflection or self-referentiality as the crucial question for contemporary philosophy, a question of its life or death.
