Systematically executed sacrifice deceives the god and dissolves his power

Evidence

Following a line of interpretation opened up by Karl Kerényi and C.G. Jung, Adorno used the theory of sacrifice to try to show that myth was already enlightenment. All human sacrifices, when systematically executed, deceive the god to whom they are made: they subject him to the primacy of human ends, and dissolve his power; and the deception of the god carries over smoothly into that practised by the disbelieving priests on the believers … By means of Odysseus, only the aspect of deception in sacrificeprobably the quintessential reason for the fictitious character of mythis elevated to self-consciousness. … Adorno thus denied that either the victim or the myth had any genuine transcendence. Rituals carried out in a finite world confirmed to the victim that finite existence was full of sacrifices, instead of questioning and condemning such a world and demanding one that was free of sacrifices. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 353

Categorization

• DEFINE: States the Dialectic of Enlightenment thesis in its sharpest form: myth is already enlightenment because sacrifice is a technique of deception and control.
• XREF: Connects to Adorno and Horkheimer’s earlier material on reason as an instrument of self-preservation and domination of nature — the same dialectic applied to the Odyssey.