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 desire for worth was referred to as a human character, absent in the
animals where there is only a desire for satisfaction. The two are
analogous, and yet fundamentally different. Pleasure is craved; worth is
what we feel we ought to crave. The two have been confused, with the
worst results for psychology and ethics. There has been a similar
confusion between personality and persons, between recognition and
memory, sexuality and love.
All these antitheses have been continually confused, and, what is even
more striking, almost always by men with the same views and theories,
and with the same object--that of trying to obliterate the difference
between man and the lower animals.
There are other less known distinctions which have been equally
neglected. Limited consciousness is an animal trait; the active power of
noticing is a purely human one. It is evident that there is something in
common in the two facts, but still they are very different. Desire, or
impulse, and will are nearly always spoken of as if they were identical.
The former is common to all living creatures, but man has, in addition,
a will, which is free, and no factor of psychology, because it is the
foundation of all psychological experiences. The identification of
impulse and will is not solely due to Darwin; it occurred also in
Schopenhauer’s conception of the will, which was sometimes biological,
sometimes purely philosophical.
I may group the two sets of factors as follows:
Common to men and animals, Limited to mankind, and in
fundamentally organic. particular to the males of
mankind.
Individuation. Individuality.
Recognition. Memory.
Pleasure. Sense of worth or value.
Sexual desire. Love.
Limitation of the field of Faculty of “taking
consciousness. notice.”
Impulse. Will.
The series shows that man possesses not only each character which is
found in all living things, but also an analogous and higher character
peculiar to himself. The old tendency at once to identify the two series
and to contrast them seems to show the existence of something binding
together the two series, and at the same time separating them. One may
recall in this connection the Buddhistic conception of there being in
man a superstructure added to the characters of lower existences. It is
as if man possessed all the properties of the beasts, with, in each
case, some special quality added. What is this that has been added? How
far does it resemble, and in what respects does it differ from, the more
primitive set?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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