The Phenomenology of Happiness: Stephen Strasser's Eidetic Explication

This article presents phenomenological findings from Stephen Strasser's eidetic study of human happiness. Happiness was found to be an experience of incomplete completion implicating the total being-becoming of the person upon having attained a perceived good affiliated with the highest levels of personal existence. As an exceptional mode of personal fulfillment, happiness relates to determinate subject-world interactions, yet always transcends them in its infinitely meaningful quality. In addition to explicating the qualitative meanings that structure the experience of happiness, Strasser identified 6 manifestations of the phenomenon: contentment, good fortune, harmony, rapture, release, and transcending anticipation. Moreover, happiness is distinguished from several phenomena that are closely related to happiness, but do not share its eidos: pleasure, enjoyment, joy, and serenity.