Sex & character / Otto Weininger ; authorised translation from the sixth German edition.

  • Weininger, Otto.
Date:
1911
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Sex & character / Otto Weininger ; authorised translation from the sixth German edition. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Leeds Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Leeds Library.

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    the artist in one important respect. The one deals in sym- bols, the other in ideas. Art and philosophy stand to one another as expression and meaning. The artist has breathed in the world to breathe it out again ; the philosopher has the world outside him and he has to absorb it. There is always something pretentious in theory; and the real meaning—which in a work of art is Nature herself and in a philosophical system, is a much condensed generalisa- tion, a thesis going to the root of the matter and proving itself—appears to strike against us harshly, almostoffensively. Where my exposition is anti-feminine, and that is nearly everywhere, men themselves will receive it with little hearti- ness or conviction ; their sexual egoism makes them prefer to see woman as they would like to have her, as they would like her to be. I need not say that I am prepared for the answer women will have to the judgment I have passed on their sex. My investigation, indeed, turns against man in the end, and although in a deeper sense than the advocates of women's rights could anticipate, assigns to man the heaviest and most real blame. But this will help me little and is of such a nature that it cannot in the smallest way rehabilitate me in the minds of women. The analysis, however, goes further than the assignment of blame ; it rises beyond simple and superficial phenomena to heights from which there opens not only a view into the nature of woman and its meaning in the universe, but also the relation to mankind and to the ultimate and most lofty problems. A definite relation to the problem of Culture is attained, and we reach the part to be played by woman in the sphere of ideal aims. There, also, where the problems of Culture and of Mankind coincide, I try not merely to explain but to assign values, for, indeed, in that region explanation and valuation are identical. To such a wide outlook my investigation was as it were driven, not deliberately steered, from the outset. The inade- quacy of all empirical psychological philosophy follows directly from empirical psychology itself. The respect for