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
Woman is first created by man’s will--he dominates her and changes her
whole being (hypnotism). Here is the explanation of the relation of the
psychical to the physical in man and woman. Man assumes a reciprocal
action of body and mind, in the sense rather that the dominant mind
creates the body, than that the mind merely projects itself on
phenomena, whilst the woman accepts both mental and psychical phenomena
empirically. None the less, even in the woman there is some reciprocal
action. However, whilst in the man, as Schopenhauer truly taught, the
human being is his own creation, his own will makes and re-makes the
body, the woman is bodily influenced and changed by an alien will
(suggestion).
Man not only forms himself, but woman also--a far easier matter. The
myths of the book of Genesis and other cosmogonies, which teach that
woman was created out of man, are nearer the truth than the biological
theories of descent, according to which males have been evolved from
females.
We have now to come to the question left open in chap. ix., as to how
woman, who is herself without soul or will, is yet able to realise to
what extent a man may be endowed with them; and we may now endeavour to
answer it. Of this one must be certain, that what woman notices, that
for which she has a sense, is not the special nature of man, but only
the general fact and possibly the grade of his maleness. It is quite
erroneous to suppose that woman has an innate capacity to understand the
individuality of a man. The lover, who is so easily fooled by the
unconscious simulation of a deeper comprehension on the part of his
sweetheart, may believe that he understands himself through a girl; but
those who are less easily satisfied cannot help seeing that women only
possess a sense of the fact not of the individuality of the soul, only
for the formal general fact, not for the differentiation of the
personality. In order to perceive and apperceive the special form,
matter must not itself be formless; woman’s relation to man, however, is
nothing but that of matter to form, and her comprehension of him nothing
but willingness to be as much formed as possible by him; the instinct of
those without existence for existence. Furthermore, this “comprehension”
is not theoretical, it is not sympathetic, it is only a desire to be
sympathetic; it is importunate and egoistical. Woman has no relation to
man and no sense of man, but only for maleness; and if she is to be
considered as more sexual than man, this greater claim is nothing but
the intense desire for the fullest and most definite formation, it is
the demand for the greatest possible quantity of existence.
And, finally, match-making is nothing else than this. The sexuality of
women is super-individual, because they are not limited, formed,
individualised entities, in the higher sense of the word.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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