Bourgeois renunciation means surviving only by sacrificing full happiness

Evidence

The pattern of Odyssean cunning is the mastery of nature through such adaptation. Renunciation, the principle of bourgeois disillusionment, the outward schema for the intensification of sacrifice, is already present in nuce in that estimation of the ratio of forces which anticipates survival as so to speak dependent on the concession of one’s own defeat, and—virtually—on death. The nimble-witted survives only at the price of his own dream, which he wins only by demystifying himself as well as the powers without. He can never have everything; he has always to wait, to be patient, to do without; he may not taste the lotus or eat the cattle of the Sun-god Hyperion, and when he steers between the rocks he must count on the loss of the men whom Scylla plucks from the boat. He just pulls through; struggle is his survival; and all the fame that he and the others win in the process serves merely to confirm that the title of hero is only gained at the price of the abasement and mortification of the instinct for complete, universal, and undivided happiness. — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 63

Categorization

• XREF: The hero-sacrifice-happiness tradeoff echoes the sacrifice theme of the reader’s published article ‘On Sacrifice: The Real Kind, with Corpses.’ — connects to: Renunciation has meaning only when serving a genuine human aim — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 495; Culture’s promise of happiness is equivocal because it exists only where freedom does not — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry: Selected Essays…, 46; The aestheticized self belongs historically to bourgeois private life — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism: A Marxist…, 213 (+3 more)
• ADDENDUM: Directly relevant to the sacrifice essay: Adorno locates bourgeois renunciation as the inward turn of sacrifice itself, the dissolution of ritual into self-denial.

Broader Connections

• Renunciation has meaning only when serving a genuine human aim #qualifies (0.82) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 495
• Marcuse argued individual happiness requires the universal attainment of positive freedom #expands (0.78) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 238
• Culture’s promise of happiness is equivocal because it exists only where freedom does not #expands (0.75) — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 46
• Damaged happiness mirrors the false whole under capitalism. #complicates (0.74) — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 947
• The aestheticized self belongs historically to bourgeois private life #expands (0.72) — Alex Callinicos, Against Postmodernism, 213