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 psychological contents of the Jewish mind are always double or
multiple. There are always before him two or many possibilities, where
the Aryan, although he sees as widely, feels himself limited in his
choice. I think that the idea of Judaism consists in this want of
reality, this absence of any fundamental relation to the
thing-in-and-for-itself. He stands, so to speak, outside reality,
without ever entering it. He can never make himself one with
anything--never enter into real relationships. He is a zealot without
zeal; he has no share in the unlimited, the unconditioned. He is without
simplicity of faith, and so is always turning to each new
interpretation, so seeming more alert than the Aryan. Internal
multiplicity is the essence of Judaism, internal simplicity that of the
Aryan.
It might be urged that the Jewish double-mindedness is modern, and is
the result of new knowledge struggling with the old orthodoxy. The
education of the Jew, however, only accentuates his natural qualities,
and the doubting Jew turns with a renewed zeal to money-making, in which
only he can find his standard of value. A curious proof of the absence
of simplicity in the mind of the Jew is that he seldom sings, not from
bashfulness, but because he does not believe in his own singing. Just as
the acuteness of Jews has nothing to do with true power of
differentiating, so his shyness about singing or even about speaking in
clear positive tones has nothing to do with real reserve. It is a kind
of inverted pride; having no true sense of his own worth, he fears being
made ridiculous by his singing or speech. The embarrassment of the Jew
extends to things which have nothing to do with the real ego.
It has been seen how difficult it is to define the Jew. He has neither
severity nor tenderness. He is both tenacious and weak. He is neither
king nor leader, slave nor vassal. He has no share in enthusiasm, and
yet he has little equanimity. Nothing is self-evident to him, and yet he
is astonished at nothing. He has no trace of Lohengrin in him, and none
of Telramund. He is ridiculous as a member of a students’ corps and he
is equally ridiculous as a “philister.” Because he believes in nothing,
he takes refuge in materialism; from this arises his avarice, which is
simply an attempt to convince himself that something has a permanent
value. And yet he is no real tradesman; what is unreal, insecure in
German commerce, is the result of the Jewish speculative interest.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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