Enlightenment selfhood is purchased through permanent renunciation of happiness
Evidence
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. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1379
Categorization
- DEEPTHINKING: The encrypted claim — that the rational, heroic subject is constituted precisely by what it forbids itself — anchors Adorno and Horkheimer’s whole theory of the bourgeois subject and is dense enough to sit with.
- XREF: connects to: Bourgeois renunciation means surviving only by sacrificing full happiness — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 63; The Dialectic of Enlightenment questioned whether happiness is separable from terror — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 1410; Marcuse argued individual happiness requires the universal attainment of positive freedom — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 238 (+2 more)
Broader Connections
- Bourgeois renunciation means surviving only by sacrificing full happiness
#corroborates(0.85) — Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment, 63 - Bourgeois Enlightenment traded freedom for self-preservation early on
#corroborates(0.82) - The Dialectic of Enlightenment questioned whether happiness is separable from terror
#qualifies(0.78) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 1410 - Marcuse argued individual happiness requires the universal attainment of positive freedom
#expands(0.75) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 238