40/Week.

Adorno and Horkheimer argue that the chief characteristic
of the modern self is that it is constituted through a process of renunciation;
that is, through a process of giving up things. This is what they mean when
they remark that ‘The history of civilization is the history of the introversion
of sacrifice – in other words, the history of renunciation’ (DE: 43). Sacrifice
has come to be internalized; I sacrifice (aspects of) myself. The ‘identical,
enduring self’ (DE: 42) relies on the renunciation of the immediate
satisfaction of impulse in exchange for its continued existence. The problem
with this, according to Adorno and Horkheimer, is that what is given back
to the self – its continued existence – is not equivalent to what it has
relinquished: ‘All who renounce give away more of their life than is given
back to them, more than the life they preserve’ (DE: 43).