ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the meaning of the word euphoria in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Once almost exclusively a medical term denoting the perception or misperception of health, euphoria now extends much further in western societies and cultures and encompasses a variety of meanings. One of the most prominent, however, is its hubristic meaning: the euphoria ascribed to people who have no idea that their euphoria is doomed to end, bringing them back down to earth with a thud. In this way, euphoria now often names the human race’s capacity for credulity, suggestibility and, sometimes, evil, which became such a prominent theme at various times and places in the twentieth century. This chapter argues that hubristic euphoria sometimes has an element of sadism. To call someone euphoric in this sense is to suggest that they should rightfully be in pain, and that they soon will be. The reports of ‘Obama euphoria’ in the run up to his election in 2008 can be read, in some instances, as a desire for him to fail: crushed literally and metaphorically under the weight of the world’s eventual disappointment in him. For the people making such judgements, the goodness of their own existence is almost always presumed and, in looking nothing like ‘euphoria,’ strengthened.
