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
From the psychological point of view, the real meaning of the
proposition of identity is not so difficult to interpret. It is clear
that to be able to say A = A, to establish the permanence of the
conception through the changes of experience, there must be something
unchangeable, and this can be only the subject. Were I part of the
stream of change I could not verify that the A had remained unchanged,
had remained itself. Were I part of the change, I could not recognise
the change. Fichte was right when he stated that the existence of the
ego was to be found concealed in pure logic, inasmuch as the ego is the
condition of intelligible existence.
The logical axioms are the principle of all truth. These posit an
existence towards which all cognition serves. Logic is a law which must
be obeyed, and man realises himself only in so far as he is logical. He
finds himself in cognition.
All error must be felt to be crime. And so man must not err. He _must_
find the truth, and so he can find it. The duty of cognition involves
the possibility of cognition, the freedom of thought, and the hope of
ascertaining truth. In the fact that logic is the condition of the mind
lies the proof that thought is free and can reach its goal.
I can treat ethics briefly and in another fashion, inasmuch as what I
have to say is founded on Kant’s moral philosophy. The deepest, the
intelligible, part of the nature of man is that part which does not take
refuge in causality, but which chooses in freedom the good or the bad.
This is manifest in consciousness of sin and in repentance. No one has
attempted to explain these facts otherwise; and no one allows himself to
be persuaded that he must commit this or that act. In the shall there
lies the possibility of the can. The causal determining factors, the
lower motives that act upon him, he is fully aware of, but he remains
conscious of an intelligible ego free to act in a different way from
other egos.
Truth, purity, faithfulness, uprightness, with reference to oneself;
these give the only conceivable ethics. Duty is only duty to oneself,
duty of the empirical ego to the intelligible ego. These appear in the
form of two imperatives that will always put to shame every kind of
psychologismus--the logical law and the moral law. The internal
direction, the categorical imperatives of logic and morality which
dominate all the codes of social utilitarianism are factors that no
empiricism can explain. All empiricism and scepticism, positivism and
relativism, instinctively feel that their principal difficulties lie in
logic and ethics. And so perpetually renewed and fruitless efforts are
made to explain this inward discipline empirically and psychologically.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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