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
The psychical contents of man’s thoughts, therefore, are more than the
explicit realisation of what women think in henids. Woman’s thought is a
sliding and gliding through subjects, a superficial tasting of things
that a man, who studies the depths, would scarcely notice; it is an
extravagant and dainty method of skimming which has no grasp of
accuracy. A woman’s thought is superficial, and touch is the most highly
developed of the female senses, the most notable characteristic of the
woman which she can bring to a high state by her unaided efforts. Touch
necessitates a limiting of the interest to superficialities, it is a
vague effect of the whole and does not depend on definite details. When
a woman “understands” a man (of the possibility or impossibility of any
real understanding I shall speak later) she is simply, so to speak
tasting (however wanting in taste the comparison may be) what he has
thought about her. Since, on her own part, there is no sharp
differentiation, it is plain that she will often think that she herself
has been understood when there is no more present than a vague
similarity of perceptions. The incongruity between the man and woman
depends, in a special measure, on the fact that the contents of the
thoughts of the man are not merely those of the woman in a higher state
of differentiation, but that the two have totally distinct sequences of
thought applied to the same object, conceptual thought in the one and
indistinct sensing in the other; and when what is called “understanding”
in the two cases is compared, the comparison is not between a fully
organised integrated thought and a lower stage of the same process; but
in the understanding of man and woman there is on the one side a
conceptual thought, on the other side an unconceptual “feeling,” a
henid.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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