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
But there have never been any great discoveries in the world of science
made by women, because the facility for truth only proceeds from a
desire for truth, and the former is always in proportion to the latter.
Woman’s sense of reality is much less than man’s, in spite of much
repetition of the contrary opinion. With women the pursuit of knowledge
is always subordinated to something else, and if this alien impulse is
sufficiently strong they can see sharply and unerringly, but woman will
never be able to see the value of truth in itself and in relation to her
own self. Where there is some check to what she wishes (perhaps
unconsciously) a woman becomes quite uncritical and loses all touch with
reality. This is why women so often believe themselves to have been the
victims of sexual overtures; this is the reason of extreme frequency of
hallucinations of the sense of touch in women, of the intensive reality
of which it is almost impossible for a man to form an idea. This also is
why the imagination of women is composed of lies and errors, whilst the
imagination of the philosopher is the highest form of truth.
The idea of truth is the foundation of everything that deserves the name
of judgment. Knowledge is simply the making of judgments, and thought
itself is simply another name for judgment. Deduction is the necessary
process in making judgments, and involves the propositions of identity
and of contradictories, and, as I have shown, these propositions are not
axiomatic for women.
A psychological proof that the power of making judgments is a masculine
trait lies in the fact that the woman recognises it as such, and that it
acts on her as a tertiary sexual character of the male. A woman always
expects definite convictions in a man, and appropriates them; she has no
understanding of indecision in a man. She always expects a man to talk,
and a man’s speech is to her a sign of his manliness. It is true that
woman has the gift of speech, but she has not the art of talking; she
converses (flirts) or chatters, but she does not talk. She is most
dangerous, however, when she is dumb, for men are only too inclined to
take her quiescence for silence.
The absolute female, then, is devoid not only of the logical rules, but
of the functions of making concepts and judgments which depend on them.
As the very nature of the conceptual faculty consists in posing subject
against object, and as the subject takes its deepest and fullest meaning
from its power of forming judgments on its objects, it is clear that
women cannot be recognised as possessing even the subject.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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