Enlightenment subjectivity is achieved through self-inflicted renunciation and the hardening of the self.

Evidence

Horkheimer called the Odyssey the first document on the anthropology of man as a rationally enlightened being in the modern sense; and the ingenuity with which Adorno managed to discover new aspects in this much-interpreted classical text was at its clearest in the way in which he used it to indicate the cost at which enlightenment was achieved. Odysseus only managed to establish himself against the mythic powers through self-inflicted privation, by renouncing devotion, by hardening himself. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 352

Categorization

• DEFINE: Casually defines the core mechanism of the dialectic of enlightenment: self-preservation bought with instinctual renunciation.
• DEEPTHINKING: The mechanism of the self constituted by privation is the central, portable idea of the whole book.