Asceticism grants pleasure more rights than society’s instalment payments do

Evidence

The affinity noted by homespun psychology between asceticism and intoxication, the love-hate relationship of saints and prostitutes, has an objectively valid basis in the fact that asceticism allows to fulfilment more of its rights than do cultural instalment payments. Hostility to pleasure can certainly not be separated from connivance at the discipline of a society whose nature is to demand more than it gives. But there is also a mistrust of pleasure stemming from the intuition that pleasure in this world is none. — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 186

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: The paradoxical claim that ascetic renunciation, not indulgence, does fuller justice to pleasure’s promise — Adorno’s dialectical reversal at its sharpest.
• XREF: connects to: Ascetic restraint now resists profit-economy madness more than hedonism resisted liberal repression — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from…, 111; Epicurean philosophy teaches need-limiting rather than indulgent pleasure — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the…, 147

Broader Connections

• Epicurean philosophy teaches need-limiting rather than indulgent pleasure #expands (0.75) — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 147