Idealist preaching of self-denial weakens and ultimately destroys the capacity for immediate pleasure.

Evidence

For the bourgeois character, it is not the case that pleasurable moments radiate happiness out across the whole of life and also brighten up those parts which are not pleasant in themselves. The capacity for immediate pleasure is instead weakened by the idealists’ preaching of refinement and self-denial, it is coarsened and often lost entirely. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 201

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies what the Institute means by ‘bourgeois character’ — a specific deformation of pleasure, not a class label.
• XREF: connects to: Moralistic self-denial weakens and coarsens the capacity for immediate pleasure — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 738; The praised Christian ideal of self-denial is built on a falsehood
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Moralistic self-denial weakens and coarsens the capacity for immediate pleasure — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 738; The praised Christian ideal of self-denial is built on a falsehood

Broader Connections

• Moralistic self-denial weakens and coarsens the capacity for immediate pleasure #expands (0.93) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 738