Husserlian Phenomenology as a Kind of Introspection.

The thesis of this article is that Husserl's proposed method for intuitively exploring the essential or laws of consciousness is a kind of introspection. After a first reflection on the meaning of "introspection," four elements of Husserl's methodology are introduced: the principle of all principles, , phenomenological reduction, and eidetic variation. These features are then individually related to six common features Eric Schwitzgebel mentions in his definition of introspection in the . The explanation of these elements is complemented by mentioning phenomenological insights they offer. It is thereby shown how Husserl's methodology evades some of the pitfalls of introspection and reaches a secure ground. Such pitfalls are: a relatively uncontrolled and varying scope of awareness, false prejudices, and problems distinguishing between idiosyncratic and general features of consciousness. As this article is written for the section , Husserl's approach is developed in relation to two well-known philosophical systems that considerably influenced him, Hume's and Kant's.