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 point out here that it must not be assumed that there exist only
extreme males with scanty remnants of the female condition, extreme
females with traces of the male, hermaphrodite or transitional forms,
and wide gaps between these conditions. I am dealing specially with
human beings, but what I have to say of them might be applied, with
more or less modification, to nearly all creatures in which sexual
reproduction takes place.
Amongst human beings the state of the case is as follows: There exist
all sorts of intermediate conditions between male and female--sexual
transitional forms. In physical inquiries an “ideal gas” is assumed,
that is to say, a gas, the behaviour of which follows the law of
Boyle-Gay-Lussac exactly, although, in fact, no such gas exists, and
laws are deduced from this so that the deviations from the ideal laws
may be established in the case of actually existing gases. In the same
fashion we may suppose the existence of an ideal man, M, and of an ideal
woman, W, as sexual types although these types do not actually exist.
Such types not only can be constructed, but must be constructed. As in
art so in science, the real purpose is to reach the type, the Platonic
Idea. The science of physics investigates the behaviour of bodies that
are absolutely rigid or absolutely elastic, in the full knowledge that
neither the one nor the other actually exists. The intermediate
conditions actually existing between the two absolute states of matter
serve merely as a starting-point for investigation of the “types” and in
the practical application of the theory are treated as mixtures and
exhaustively analysed. So also there exist only the intermediate stages
between absolute males and females, the absolute conditions never
presenting themselves.
Let it be noted clearly that I am discussing the existence not merely of
embryonic sexual neutrality, but of a permanent bisexual condition. Nor
am I taking into consideration merely those intermediate sexual
conditions, those bodily or psychical hermaphrodites upon which, up to
the present, attention has been concentrated. In another respect my
conception is new. Until now, in dealing with sexual intermediates, only
hermaphrodites were considered; as if, to use a physical analogy, there
were in between the two extremes a single group of intermediate forms,
and not an intervening tract equally beset with stages in different
degrees of transition.
The fact is that males and females are like two substances combined in
different proportions, but with either element never wholly missing. We
find, so to speak, never either a man or a woman, but only the male
condition and the female condition. Any individual, “A” or “B,” is never
to be designated merely as a man or a woman, but by a formula showing
that it is a composite of male and female characters in different
proportions, for instance, as follows:
{ α M { β W
A = { B = {
{ α´W { β´M
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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