Eidetic of the experience of termination

Stephan Strasser

pp. 133-148

in: Joseph Kockelmans (ed), Phenomenological psychology, Berlin, Springer, 1987

Abstract

However diverse the notions may be which we form of "happiness-as-such", in one respect we agree essentially: we know that we do not possess it from the beginning. One "makes," "seeks," "builds" his happiness. In all these expressions we find the notion that happiness must be the result of an act, an activity, a phase of life, the result of living. The experience of happiness thus has nothing immediately to do with the inchoative upsurge and being-underway in a certain direction. It is rather a kind of experience of termination. It is connected with the terminating phase of experience in a manner to be still more carefully determined.