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
I must add to the exposition of the non-logical nature of the female
some statements as to her non-moral nature. The profound falseness of
woman, the result of the want in her of a permanent relation to the idea
of truth or to the idea of value, would prove a subject of discussion so
exhaustive that I must go to work another way. There are such endless
imitations of ethics, such confusing copies of morality, that women are
often said to be on a moral plane higher than that of man. I have
already pointed out the need to distinguish between the non-moral and
the immoral, and I now repeat that with regard to women we can talk only
of the non-moral, of the complete absence of a moral sense. It is a
well-known fact of criminal statistics and of daily life that there are
very few female criminals. The apologists of the morality of women
always point to this fact.
But in deciding the question as to the morality of women we have to
consider not if a particular person has objectively sinned against the
idea, but if the person has or has not a subjective centre of being that
can enter into a relation with the idea, a relation the value of which
is lowered when a sin is committed. No doubt the male criminal inherits
his criminal instincts, but none the less he is conscious--in spite of
theories of “moral insanity”--that by his action he has lowered the
value of his claim on life. All criminals are cowardly in this matter,
and there is none of them that thinks he has raised his value and his
self-consciousness by his crime, or that would try to justify it to
himself.
The male criminal has from birth a relation to the idea of value just
like any other man, but the criminal impulse, when it succeeds in
dominating him, destroys this almost completely. Woman, on the contrary,
often believes herself to have acted justly when, as a matter of fact,
she has just done the greatest possible act of meanness; whilst the true
criminal remains mute before reproach, a woman can at once give
indignant expression to her astonishment and anger that any one should
question her perfect right to act in this or that way. Women are
convinced of their own integrity without ever having sat in judgment on
it. The criminal does not, it is true, reflect on himself, but he never
urges his own integrity; he is much more inclined to get rid of the
thought of his integrity,[13] because it might remind him of his guilt:
and in this is the proof that he had a relation to the idea (of truth),
and only objects to be reminded of his unfaithfulness to his better
self. No male criminal has ever believed that his punishment was unjust.
A woman, on the contrary, is convinced of the animosity of her accuser,
and if she does not wish to be convinced of it, no one can persuade her
that she has done wrong.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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