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
If we make a criterion of genius the exhibition of this threefold
“timelessness” we shall have a measure by which it is easy to test all
claimants. Lombroso and Türck have expanded the popular view which
ascribes genius to all whose intellectual or practical achievements are
much above the average. Kant and Schelling have insisted on the more
exclusive doctrine that genius can be predicated only of the great
creative artists. The truth probably lies between the two. I am inclined
to think that only great artists and great philosophers (amongst the
latter, I include, above all, the great religious teachers) have proved
a claim to genius. Neither the “man of action” nor “the man of science”
has any claim.
Men of action, famous politicians and generals, may possess a few traits
resembling genius (particularly a specially good knowledge of men and an
enormous capacity for remembering people). The psychology of such traits
will be dealt with later; they are confused with genius only by those
whom the externals of greatness dazzle. The man of genius almost
typically renounces such external greatness because of the real
greatness within him. The really great man has the strongest sense of
values; the distinguished general is absorbed by the desire for power.
The former seeks to link power with real value; the latter desires that
power itself should be valued. Great generals and great politicians,
like the bird Phœnix, are born out of fiery chaos and like it disappear
again in chaos. The great emperor or the great demagogue is the only man
who lives entirely in the present; he does not dream of a more
beautiful, better future; his mind does not dwell on his own past which
has already passed, and so in the two ways most possible to man, he does
not transcend time, but lives only in the moment. The great genius does
not let his work be determined by the concrete finite conditions that
surround him, whilst it is from these that the work of the statesman
takes its direction and its termination. And so the great emperor is no
more than a phenomenon of nature, whereas the genius is outside nature
and is an incorporation of the mind. The works of men of action crumble
at the death of their authors, if indeed they have not already decayed,
or they survive only a brief time leaving no traces behind them except
what the chronicles record as having been done and later undone. The
emperor creates no works that survive time, passing into eternity; such
creations come from genius. It is the genius in reality and not the
other who is the creator of history, for it is only the genius who is
outside and unconditioned by history. The great man has a history, the
emperor is only a part of history. The great man transcends time; time
creates and time destroys the emperor.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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