Sex & Character: Authorised Translation from the Sixth German EditionWeininger, Otto
Philosophy
Sex & Character: Authorised Translation from the Sixth German Edition
Weininger, Otto
Character; Sex; Sex (Psychology); Sexual ethics
Existing psychology would find
its place in the branches of the new science, and in this way only would
Wundt’s desire to establish the foundations of a science of the mind be
fulfilled. It would be absurd to despair of this simply because of the
uselessness of the existing science of the mind which has not yet even
grasped its own object. In this way a justification for experimental
psychology might yet be found, in spite of the important results of the
investigations by Windelband and Rickert on the relation between natural
and psychical science, or the old dichotomy between the physical and
mental sciences.
The relation between the continuity of memory and the desire for
immortality is borne out by the fact that woman is devoid of the desire
for immortality. It is to be noted that those persons are quite wrong
who have attributed the desire for immortality to the fear of death.
Women are as much afraid of death as are men, but they have not the
longing for immortality.
My attempted explanation of the psychological desire for immortality is
as yet more an indication of the connection between the desire and
memory than a deduction from a higher natural law. It will always be
found that the connection actually exists; the more a man lives in his
past (not, as a superficial reader might guess, in his future) the more
intense will be his longing for immortality. The lack of the desire for
immortality in women is to be associated with the lack in them of
reverence for their own personality. It seems, however, that the absence
of both reverence and desire for immortality in woman is due to a more
general principle, and in the same fashion in the case of man the
co-existence of a higher form of memory and the desire for immortality
may be traced to some deeper root. So far, I have attempted only to show
the coincidence of the two, how the deep respect for their own past and
the deep desire for their own future are to be found in the same
individuals. It will now be my task to find the common origin of these
two factors of the mind.
Let us take as a starting-point what we were able to lay down as to the
universality of the memory of great men. To such everything is equally
real: what took place long ago and the most recent experience. Thus it
happens that a single experience does not end with the moment of time in
which it happened, does not disappear as this moment of time disappears,
but through the memory is wrested from the grasp of time. Memory makes
experience timeless; the essence of it is that it should transcend time.
A man can only remember the past because memory is free from the control
of time, because events which in nature are functions of time, in the
spirit have conquered time.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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