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 practice of merely calling any one who assails woman a misogynist,
instead of refuting argument by argument, has much to commend it. Hatred
is never impartial, and, therefore, to describe a man as having an
animus against the object of his criticism, is at once to lay him open
to the charge of insincerity, immorality, and partiality, and one that
can be made with a hyperbole of accusation and evasion of the point,
which only equal its lack of justification. This sort of answer never
fails in its object, which is to exempt the vindicator from refuting the
actual statements. It is the oldest and handiest weapon of the large
majority of men, who never wish to see woman as she is. No men who
really think deeply about women retain a high opinion of them; men
either despise women or they have never thought seriously about them.
There is no doubt that it is a fallacious method in a theoretical
argument to refer to one’s opponent’s psychological motives instead of
bringing forward proofs to controvert his statements.
It is not necessary for me to say that in logical controversy the
adversaries should place themselves under an impersonal conception of
truth, and their aim should be to reach a result, irrespective of their
own concrete opinions. If, however, in an argument, one side has come to
a certain conclusion by a logical chain of reasoning, and the other side
merely opposes the conclusion without having followed the reasoning
process, it is at once fair and appropriate to examine the psychological
motives which have induced the adversaries to abandon argument for
abuse. I shall now put the champions of women to the test and see how
much of their attitude is due to sentimentality, how much of it is
disinterested, and how much due to selfish motives.
All objections raised against those who despise women arise from the
erotic relations in which man stands to woman. This relationship is
absolutely different from the purely sexual attraction which occurs in
the animal world, and plays a most important part in human affairs. It
is quite erroneous to say that sexuality and eroticism, sexual impulse
and love, are fundamentally one and the same thing, the second an
embellishing, refining, spiritualising sublimation of the first;
although practically all medical men hold this view, and even such men
as Kant and Schopenhauer thought so. Before I go into the reasons for
maintaining the existence of this great distinction, I should like to
say something about the views of these two men.
Kant’s opinion is not of much weight, because love as sexual impulse
must have been as little known to him as possible, probably less than in
the case of any other man. He was so little erotic that he never felt
the kindred desire to travel.[17] He represents too lofty and pure a
type to speak with authority on this matter: his one passion was
metaphysics.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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