Emancipation from society weakens rather than empowers the individual

Evidence

Within repressive society the individual’s emancipation not only benefits but damages him. Freedom from society robs him of the strength for freedom. For however real he may be in his relations to others, he is, considered absolutely, a mere abstraction. He has no content that is not socially constituted, no impulse transcending society that is not directed at assisting the social situation to transcend itself. — Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia, 169

Categorization

• APHORISMS: A candidate for timeless negative wisdom: the ‘free’ or isolated self is an abstraction with no content beyond the social relations it flees.
• DEEPTHINKING: The claim that there is no impulse transcending society except one aimed at social self-transcendence is the chapter’s deepest turn.
• XREF: connects to: Individuality cannot escape the social system because its inner essence already embodies that system; Power produces the individual rather than merely repressing it — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 301; Individual and social liberation must be waged together but not assumed interdependent (+14 more)

Broader Connections

• Power produces the individual rather than merely repressing it #complicates (0.80) — Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish- The Birth of the…, 301
• The individual is an effect of power, not its presupposed target #complicates (0.80) — Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended, 48
• Individual and social liberation must be waged together but not assumed interdependent #complicates (0.78)
• Disciplinary power produces individuality rather than merely restricting it from outside #complicates (0.78)
• Power produces subjects and desires rather than merely repressing them #complicates (0.75) — Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety, 131
• Liberation-from-control paradoxically requires self-control by a prior autonomous self #complicates (0.75)
• Individual freedom is achieved only through the freedom of others #contradicts (0.72) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, 144