Otto Weininger (1880 - 1903)
Related: Austria - misogyny - pessimism - philosophy - Vienna Secession
Biography
Otto Weininger (April 3, 1880 - October 4, 1903) was an Austrian philosopher. In 1903, he published the book Geschlecht und Charakter (Sex and Character); it gained popularity after Weininger's theatrical suicide at the age of 23. Today, the book is dismissed as sexist and anti-Semitic by some, however it continues to be held up as a great work of lasting genius and spiritual wisdom by others.
Born in Vienna, he was a gifted student and enrolled at the philosophical faculty of the University of Vienna in 1898, receiving his doctorate in 1902.
In his book Sex and Character, Weininger argues that all people are composed of a mixture of the male and the female substance, and attempts to support his view scientifically. The male aspect is active, productive, conscious and moral/logical, while the female aspect is passive, unproductive, unconscious and amoral/alogical. Weininger argues that emancipation should be reserved for the "masculine women", e.g. some lesbians, and that the female life is consumed with the sexual function: both with the act, as a prostitute, and the product, as a mother. Woman is a "matchmaker". By contrast, the duty of the male, or the masculine aspect of personality, is to strive to become a genius, and to forego sexuality for an abstract love of the absolute, God, which he finds within himself.
A significant part of his book is about the nature of genius, no doubt written from personal experience. Weininger argues that there is no such thing as a person who has a genius for, say, mathematics, or music, but there is only the universal genius, in whom everything exists and makes sense. And he reasons that such genius is probably present in all people to some degree.
In a separate chapter, Weininger, himself a Jew who had converted to Christianity in 1902, analyzes the archetypical Jew as feminine, and thus profoundly irreligious, without true individuality (soul), and without a sense of good and evil. Christianity is described as "the highest expression of the highest faith", while Judaism is called "the extreme of cowardliness". Weininger decries the decay of modern times, and attributes much of it to feminine, and thus Jewish, influences. It is important to remember that by Weininger's reckoning literally all people contain some elements of both femininity and what he calls "Jewishness".
Weininger shot himself in the house in Vienna where Beethoven had died, the man he considered one of the greatest geniuses of all. This made him a cause célèbre, inspired several imitation suicides, and turned his book into a success. The book received glowing reviews by August Strindberg, who wrote that it had "probably solved the hardest of all problems", the "woman problem".
Ludwig Wittgenstein read the book as a schoolboy and was deeply impressed by it, later listing it as one of his influences and recommending it to friends. Indeed, Weininger's quote "Logic and ethics are fundamentally the same, they are no more than duty to oneself" could have been written by Wittgenstein. The themes of the decay of modern civilization and the duty to perfect one's genius occur repeatedly in Wittgenstein's later writings.
Isolated parts of Weininger's writings were used by Nazi propaganda, despite the fact that Weininger actively argued against the ideas of race upheld by the Nazis. Adolf Hitler is reported to have said something to the effect of "There was only one decent Jew, and he killed himself." Nevertheless, Weininger's books were denounced by the Nazis, most probably because Weininger encouraged women to think for themselves, and to determine their own future, which went directly against the Nazi idea of the role of women in society. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Weininger [Dec 2005]
Sex & Character (1902) - Otto Weininger
Otto Weininger's extraordinary life culminated in the publication of his timeless work Sex and Character. Soon after the publication he went to Italy to await results. There appeared to be none, and during the next four months an intellectual malady, described by his friends as "a too grave sense of responsibility," became acute. On October 4, 1903, at the age of 23, he took his own life.
If Otto Weininger continues to inspire genius through what he has left us then I will consider half my work already done. His book Sex and Character is one of the few masterpieces of modern times. In it, Weininger overflows with profound insight, deepest love, and awesome courage. To quote the eloquent author of an old book:
We have all come under the spell of Otto Weininger, even those of us who have never heard of him, for he was one of those geniuses whose ideas echo far beyond any sound that is made by their names. . .
Otto Weininger's extraordinary life culminated in the publication of his timeless work Sex and Character. Soon after the publication he went to Italy to await results. There appeared to be none, and during the next four months an intellectual malady, described by his friends as "a too grave sense of responsibility," became acute. On October 4, 1903, at the age of 23, he took his own life.
. . . "Sex & Character" began to sell. It ran through printing after printing. It was translated into innumerable languages, and in a few years his publishers could declare with no more than pardonable exaggeration that no scientific book in the whole history of books had ever a greater success. --Kevin Solway
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