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
What I have been discussing depends on the actual meaning of the word
“ego” to a woman. If a woman were asked what she meant by her “ego” she
would certainly think of her body. Her superficies, that is the woman’s
ego. The ego of the female is quite correctly described by Mach in his
“Anti-metaphysical Remarks.”
The ego of a woman is the cause of the vanity which is specific of
women. The analogue of this in the male is an emanation of the set of
his will towards his conception of the good, and its objective
expression is a sensitiveness, a desire that no one shall call in
question the possibility of attaining this supreme good. It is his
personality that gives to man his value and his freedom from the
conditions of time. This supreme good, which is beyond price, because,
in the words of Kant, there can be found no equivalent for it, is the
dignity of man. Women, in spite of what Schiller has said, have no
dignity, and the word “lady” was invented to supply this defect, and her
pride will find its expression in what she regards as the supreme good,
that is to say, in the preservation, improvement, and display of her
personal beauty. The pride of the female is something quite peculiar to
herself, something foreign even to the most handsome man, an obsession
by her own body; a pleasure which displays itself, even in the least
handsome girl, by admiring herself in the mirror, by stroking herself
and playing with her own hair, but which comes to its full measure only
in the effect that her body has on man. A woman has no true solitude,
because she is always conscious of herself only in relation to others.
The other side of the vanity of women is the desire to feel that her
body is admired, or, rather, sexually coveted, by a man.
This desire is so strong that there are many women to whom it is
sufficient merely to know that they are coveted.
The vanity of women is, then, always in relation to others; a woman
lives only in the thoughts of others about her. The sensibility of women
is directed to this. A woman never forgets that some one thought her
ugly; a woman never considers herself ugly; the successes of others at
the most only make her think of herself as perhaps less attractive. But
no woman ever believes herself to be anything but beautiful and
desirable when she looks at herself in the glass; she never accepts her
own ugliness as a painful reality as a man would, and never ceases to
try to persuade others of the contrary.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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